


Rest for the Wicked

by sagesiren



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-16
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 53,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23170192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagesiren/pseuds/sagesiren
Summary: She could see why he'd been described as 'charming' by the last agent who tried to get close to him. It had been written in the report the Agency had received days before that agent was found washed up on the banks of the East River.(Steve is a mobster in Brooklyn, Peggy is undercover to infiltrate his organization, and they both are in over their heads)
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Comments: 193
Kudos: 287





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> None of this would be possible without the incredible gif-ing abilities, brainstorming support, or encouragement of beautifulwhensarcastic :)
> 
> I was going to wait until I had this whole thing written to post, but figured we could all use a bit more fanfiction to keep us occupied during the various quarantines. A lot of this will be familiar if you've read the second snippet I wrote for this story on my tumblr, but there will be a lot more new stuff to come!

The transfer from her counterterrorism task force at MI6 to the New York City imports team was a demotion in all but name. She knew it, her last team knew it, and her new American handler did as well.

"You don't have to like the job, but you damn well better make yourself a good fit for it," he said, handing the dossier to Peggy across his file-crowded desk. Phillips was on the older side, typical for a case manager: ex-military if she had to guess, and she had a knack for guessing right. There were no stars hung on his office walls, but she made a mental note to dig into his history later so she better knew who she would be working with on this operation.

It had always proven helpful to know her colleagues as well as her marks.

"A Brooklyn mobster with a penchant for dramatics?" she asked as she scanned the overview of who she’d be dealing with. "Why haven't you been able to pin anything on him yet?"

"He's smart. Anytime we get him on anything, someone else takes the fall for it. No one turns on him, and if we’ve got the slightest hint they’re about to, they get killed or disappear. We’ve even had a few guys in WITSEC off themselves.” 

“Clearly the issue is with your protection details,” Peggy said, looking up at him with a raised eyebrow. “It seems like my services would be more useful as a guard dog.”

Phillips leaned forward and tapped the heavy file in her hands. “Keep reading. I want you ready for deep cover in a week."

She nodded, fingering through the document to get a quick feel for what to expect. "I'll be ready in two days."

He got up from his chair heavily, both hands on the armrests, but with a light grip, putting on an air of exhaustion for effect. "Take the week. You'll be there longer than you think."

"I don’t think it will take that long to catch him in something," Peggy argued in her politest tone as she stood.

"Think whatever you want," he said, walking past her and not looking back until he’d gotten to the door. He stopped before opening it. "Doesn't change the fact that he's been avoiding a conviction for at least a decade's worth of crimes, ranging from petty theft to human trafficking."

There would be something that she could use as an in, though. There always was. An insecurity, an employee with loose lips. She’d solve the puzzle of Steven Rogers, and she'd be back to her old job - and her office with floor-to-ceiling windows and a view of the Thames - in no time. 

“Final briefing’s in 32A, oh six hundred tomorrow,” he said as she walked through the door. 

Right about a military background, Peggy thought. 

The briefing didn’t tell her anything that she hadn’t read in the file, other than the details of her cover that she was starting to get the feel for, shaping the cover into a person with history, feelings, motivations. Peggy didn't mind deep cover as much as some of the other agents she knew, but it tended to be a younger job. She'd been in this career for ten years now, and had only spent the first few in the field before getting promoted to bigger and better things. 

Still, it didn’t mean she was happy about it. If Peggy had been there for her skillset instead of as a punishment, playing the dumb, blonde, American honeypot would have been fun. She could picture her boss at the London office, cherry-picking her for this degrading placement as he snickered into his coffee, even if there was no way he’d have known the exact details of what her job would be for the US agency.

All she had to do was dye her hair, stuff her tits in an uncomfortable bra, and distract Rogers enough to make him slip up.

Easy.

Brooklyn wasn't a bad place to be, all things considered, even if she missed the comforts of home. Her South Kensington flat in London was in an old building with creaking floors, tall ceilings, and dark walls that she'd filled with sleek furniture in light colors to compensate. She kept her three favourite types of tea in her desk at MI6 and in her pantry, and was already miserable at the idea of not being able to sit at her grand glass table every morning with a proper cuppa and the news. She had a home office with a wall of novels and reference books, a desk that she kept pristine, all of her papers in order, a lamp that put a soft glow in the room for the many late nights she worked. 

The cover, Betty Carver, had a shoebox sized apartment two blocks from where Steven Rogers was rumored to be residing, and within a ten block radius of most of his local haunts. 

Peggy moved in on a Saturday afternoon with the goal of doing so unnoticed. There was a bedroom, which she knew to be grateful for in a New York City apartment, and a kitchen that existed in the form of a fridge, a stove, and a small section of counter and cabinet space against the wall of her living room. Unfortunately, Betty was unemployed, and moving anywhere larger would have been too conspicuous. She unpacked her clothes and had the movers help her with furniture, even the lamps and bedside table that she easily could have carried herself. She'd become Betty the moment she'd stepped out of the hotel that morning.

She sat at the rickety desk, shoved to the side of the main living space, and put her feet up on a box of books someone at the agency had picked out for Betty, to give herself a few minutes of reviewing the file she'd memorized to keep from forgetting the important details, now that she wouldn't have access to it. 

From what the previous surveillance efforts had gathered, Steve Rogers spent his weekdays at Shield & Key, the locksmith shop he owned as a front. He had an office in the back in which no fewer than three of their agents had searched for, and failed to find, anything suspicious. For lunch, he’d go to one of four bodegas within walking distance, rotating between them so as to not play favorites. He tended to let his one other employee - a childhood friend turned special ops honorable discharge with a clean background - handle customers while he himself stayed in the back office or ran seemingly above-board errands. 

Saturdays were yet undetermined, as he always seemed to be out of town, or at least untraceable, but Sunday would be the easiest time for her to make a move. He went to church every Sunday morning, Irish Catholic, in a mostly elderly and family oriented congregation, and then he would do an essentials-only grocery shop at the bodega closest to his home. There was a chain grocery store a block closer with more variety and fresher options, but it was clear he was against anything other than locally owned establishments. 

If the intel was correct about him keeping to this schedule religiously, it told her the most important thing she needed to know about him: He was cocky. It took a lot of confidence for someone with so many enemies to be that level of predictable. Cocky meant he thought he was untouchable.

A knock at the door startled her out of her thoughts and she pulled herself together as she went to answer, assuming it was the mover with forgotten item. 

Standing before her was a short elderly woman with tight gray hair flying in every direction, and layers of brightly colored clothes with long necklaces dangling around her neck, who let herself in as soon as the door was open. “You’re the new girl!” She beamed, taking Peggy’s hand and shaking it with both of hers. “Oh, look at you, you’re lovely. Perfect for this apartment. You know, they’re working on building this place back up. ‘Move out and we’ll get you somewhere nicer, Fran,’ they say, and I know they just want to charge more for where I live. This place used to be a dump.” She gestured to the apartment dismissively, and turned to Peggy, dropping her hand and instead touching her arm. “I’m Fran. Nice to meet you.”

Peggy tried to take it all in, and took Fran’s hand in hers. “I’m Betty,” she said, the first time she introduced herself out loud. It came out near-flawlessly, just short of the accent she was aiming for, and quickly adjusted. “Pleased to meet you. You’ve lived here long?”

“Oh,” Fran said, putting a hand over her heart and leaning forward, “forty years now. I’m gonna die in this building. I’m next to you, 302. You know, my friend Benny used to live here before he got wrapped up in something or other. Benny had these parties all night, god, he was something terrible, but not terrible on the eyes.” She gave Peggy a conspiratorial smile. “Pretty thing like you must have a boyfriend? Do you live alone?”

“No one special in my life right now, no.” Peggy smiled politely, filing away everything she’d said. Fran seemed the type to know what was going on in the building, which could be advantageous. She also seemed the type to talk for hours, which could get old quickly. 

“And such a pretty accent! You’re from the south? Texas? I do love Texas. I was there once with my husband, my first husband. Now I’ve got a cat and I’m better off with that.” She laughed at her own rhyme as she reached for her phone. “Let me show you a picture I’ve got, he’s the devil incarnate. Ripped up all my couches. My cat, not my husband, though the second one did a number on my walls—”

“I’ve got an awful lot of unpacking to do,” Peggy said, gently touching Fran’s arm, seeing an hour long conversation headed her way. She hoped mirroring Fran’s gesture would hide the dismissal in kindness. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you, though, Miss Fran. Maybe we can catch up once I’m all settled in?”

“Look at me, going on and on, overwhelming you! I’ll bring something over to eat. If you ever need anything, I’m just down the hall.” Fran gave her a light hug. “And if you need me quicker, don’t hesitate to call. Oh, I should give you my number, god, if I even remember it. I should never have gotten rid of my landline,” she muttered, pulling out her cell phone and squinting at it while tapping hard at the screen. 

“How about I stop by tomorrow morning at eight on the dot? No phone needed,” Peggy said easily, deciding to pick her brain on the neighborhood once she’d had time to come up with the proper questions to ask, and more time to remind herself of her own backstory.

“Aren’t you sweet?” Fran touched her arm again. “What a pleasure meeting you, Betty. See you tomorrow at eight. Actually, make it ten. I sleep late.”

Peggy laughed. “Ten it is, Miss Fran. I’ll see you, then.”

She closed the door as soon as she was gone, somehow exhausted from a conversation that couldn’t have lasted more than three minutes, but decided she ought to do the unpacking that she said she would be. She managed to enjoy it, and ordered some food for herself as a reward for getting the place looking like it should for Betty. 

The next day was uneventful as she applied to some jobs in the area that Betty was overqualified for, and took a walk through the local cemetery with its ornate mausoleums, winding paths, and Manhattan skyline views. All in all, it was the kind of day that had her itching to do something ill advised like push up the timeline that she’d been given.

She wasn’t supposed to make contact for at least a week, but figured it’d be wise to establish her presence in the community early on. If she was a familiar part of the background that made up Steven Rogers’ life, he’d trust her more easily when it came time to interact. Peggy curled her newly blonde hair, grabbed Betty’s - her - purse, and set off to the bodega for a few groceries, a quick observation, and nothing more.

That was the plan, anyway.

"That's a lot of pasta for one person," Rogers said, coming up next to her and plucking a box of elbow macaroni from her hand basket to look it over. She’d only just put a few boxes in, had barely noticed anything about him other than the fact that he was there, but he'd clearly been watching her from the moment she came in. 

He was standing a little too close, a reusable shopping bag full of groceries on his arm and an unmistakable fleck of dried blood on the collar of his white shirt. He smelled pleasantly of cologne, as if he was just out of the shower.

"Pardon?" Peggy asked, putting on her slight southern drawl and meeting his eyes. Her American accent was impeccable now, but the long southern vowels would help if her English accent managed to slip through.

"Four things of pasta, and jarred tomato sauce?" He _tsk_ ed his tongue and shook his head. She could see why he'd been described as 'charming' by the last agent who tried to get close to him. It had been written in the report the Agency had received days before that agent was found washed up on the banks of the East River. Rogers motioned to her basket. "You live alone?"

Peggy smiled demurely, tapping his arm as if to chastise him. He was warm, clearly well-toned under his misleading cardigan. "Isn't that the kind of thing a respectable lady doesn't answer?" 

"I'm not in the business of knowing too many respectable ladies," Rogers replied, and gave her a wink. He nudged her arm to get her attention as he turned toward the cashier. "Hey, Jimmy, you’ll put her groceries on my tab, yeah?" 

The man behind the counter lifted a hand but didn't move from where he sat on a stool, opening and refolding a newspaper.

"Oh, you don't have to do that," she said, flustered without having to act. Starting off a relationship with Brooklyn’s largest mob boss by incurring a debt didn’t seem like a good plan.

"Seems like I do. You're in that pricey walk up on 68th, right? I heard they just rented the apartment out."

"That was a good guess," Peggy said with an easy laugh, keeping her voice calm despite the inherent threat of him knowing where she lived. “There must be apartments getting filled every day around here.”

"Yeah. Too many people moving in," Steve said, lowering his voice a little in clear distaste. She’d read that in his file, knew hostility towards outsiders was a trait of his. He seemed to shake himself and stuck out his hand. "I'm Steve, by the way. Steve Rogers."

"Betty," she said, taking his hand and giving it a light shake. She didn’t hold his hand too tightly. She was simply Betty Carver, the weak woman intimidated by the hot man in front of her. It helped that one of those things was true.

"Betty," he repeated, all evidence of his annoyance gone, replaced by pure heat. The name sounded dirty on his tongue. She might have shivered if she didn't have better control over herself. "You know, I don't think it's a coincidence we met today, Betty."

"Oh?" Peggy asked, a pulse of adrenaline shooting through her. She smiled politely. "Why's that?"

He motioned with a few fingers for her to follow him to the sad looking produce section where he put a few tomatoes in her basket, switching out the jars of sauce. "You gotta learn how to cook for yourself now that you're in Brooklyn. I can come by and show you sometime." 

“Should I expect you any specific time?” she asked, holding out the basket for him to place a head of garlic after he'd inspected it.

“I don’t know when I’ll be free yet, but sometime soon.” He led her again to the spices where he handed one of each to her—there were only two, and something told Peggy that they were kept in stock because they were his favorites.

This time, when Peggy spoke, she put a hint of playfulness in her voice, hoping he’d pick up on it. “I hope you won’t be expecting anything from me in exchange for cooking me dinner.”

"It comes free of charge. Consider it your welcome to my neighborhood."

She made herself give him a harmless, flirty laugh that came out more disbelieving than anything else. "It can't be all yours."

He grinned. "You're new here, but you'll learn." He turned and waved to the man behind the counter, then headed out without paying. 

Peggy grabbed a few more items after he left, more to seem believable than out of actual need, and when she stepped up to the counter and was about to offer to pay, the man looked up at her with a smile. “It’s alright. Rogers said you’re good.”

"Does he do that for a lot of people?" Peggy asked with a small smile.

The man, Jimmy, adjusted a set of dog tags around his neck. She tried to catch the full name on them, but he tucked them into his shirt before she could make out anything more than a few numbers and the letters _MO_. "Nah," he said as he bagged her groceries, "just the ones he likes to keep an eye on."

She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked down at the bag with another smile, this one embarrassed, flattered, calculated. "Should I take that as a compliment or be worried some strange man in the big city is concerning himself with me?”

"It's Steve," the guy said with a chuckle. He picked up his newspaper and sat back on his stool. "He's harmless."

She clutched her bag of groceries, and nodded. "Well, thank you." She left, the bell ringing behind her. 

Peggy felt herself settle into Betty as she walked home, her walk swaying her hips and bouncing her blonde curls. Steve was different than she’d expected, more charismatic, dangerous. Less the type she could easily distract and more the type she’d have to out-maneuver, which meant she might have to do more than flirt to get anything useful out of him. 

She mentally adjusted her personal timeline as she walked, deciding on the next best place to intercept him. She had a feeling this job would be far more interesting than she expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fran isn't based on any character from canon, but she is the amalgamation of every old lady I have ever interacted with in New York City.
> 
> If anyone is interested in mapping this out, I'm imagining Steve's neighborhood to basically be Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Historically, Brooklyn's Irish neighborhoods were Park Slope and Bay Ridge, but Sunset Park is between those, not to mention it's one of Brooklyn's neighborhoods dealing with more and more gentrification, and it has some water access for anyone who might be in the "imports, exports" business, if you catch my drift.
> 
> Also, here's a link to the gifset that inspired this fic: https://beautifulwhensarcastic.tumblr.com/post/189231862787/despite-his-charming-veneer-steven-grant-rogers-is


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next update will definitely take longer than this one, but I thought I'd get this up since I had it ready!
> 
> (also, slight TW for mentions of non-con, but none actually happens)

She should have guessed this would be the case, but every adjustment Peggy had made to her plan after first meeting Steve was foiled within days. Even knowing where he would be at any given point, she could barely get close to him. She’d passed him a few times on the street, but he'd been in a hurry the once she'd tried to stop and talk to him, and she didn't want to bother him at his church just yet, as that might really be seen as pushing the balance of coincidence. 

Peggy had no better ideas than to walk right into the lion’s den, so to speak. At least she would have a good reason for being there. She made her way to Shield & Key at a time when she knew he’d be in. 

The store was small, narrow, and Peggy compared the layout to the satellite images she’d seen, quickly realizing that the majority of the space must be taken up by the back room, Steve’s office. There was no one behind the counter, but there was a single door with peeling red paint and an  _ employees only _ sign. Mapping it all out in her head, she decided where she’d put security cameras if she had been the one to set up the feeds, and made sure to stay in the sight of at least two of them as she stepped to a rack of wires, screws, and other bits of miscellaneous hardware. She tilted her head and pulled down a package, flipping it over to read the back to pass the time, and soon she was rewarded by the click of the back door.

“Can I help you?” someone asked, and Peggy made herself startle, turning around with wide eyes. 

James Buchanan Barnes stood tall, his long hair in a bun, his hand on his hip, staring her down. She knew everything about him from the school he was enrolled in as a child to every declassified activity he got up to in the army. She gave him a meek smile, looking as intimidated by him as she expected she should.

“Hi, I’m Betty.” She stuck out her hand, and when he didn’t respond more than looking at it, she continued hesitantly, looking down and digging around in her purse to find her key ring. “I was hoping to get a copy of my key made? Just one, please.”

Barnes held out his hand and she gave it to him. He took a quick look over it and went behind the counter. “You want the same shape?”

“Please,” Peggy said, stringing the package of screws back on the rack and looking at the other merchandise. “My neighbor said she’d look after it for me in case I lost mine. I hear my super doesn’t pay much attention to any of us.”

Barnes grunted in response. 

She heard the click of the door, and assumed Barnes had gone into the back room again, but then heard a soft murmuring of voices a few feet away. Finally. 

“Betty? I thought I heard you out here.” She turned. Steve was leaning back against the counter and giving her the kind of look that either meant he was undressing her or assessing how many weapons she had on her. 

“You’re… Steve, right?” Peggy asked, and grinned when he gave her a nod. “Gosh, usually I’m terrible with names. Are you here for a key, too?”

Steve chuckled, getting up and coming closer, once again letting himself into her personal space. “Yeah, something like that. You wanna grab a coffee? The place next door is so good it’s criminal.” He put a hand on her back and started guiding her to the street before she'd answered.

“Only if I get to pay,” she said, keeping herself relaxed against him. She could tell he was packing, but Betty wouldn’t know that. 

“Is this about the groceries?” Steve said, holding the door to the cafe open and letting her go in first.

“And my pride. My parents would be rolling in their graves right now if they knew I allowed a favor to go unpaid,” she said, pulling out her wallet. 

Steve got in line. "Get me one of whatever you’re getting,” he decided, keeping a respectable distance now. “What brings you to my store?”

Peggy let out a bubbly laugh. “It’s your store? Is that because you own this neighborhood?”

“Well, I actually do own the store,” he grinned at her. “I mostly run the books in the back, try to keep the place afloat. Now, if I was lucky, you’d have been coming to see me.” Steering the conversation right back to business. She could work with that.

“I needed a key copied,” Peggy said lightly, stepping up to the counter. She ordered caramel lattes for the both of them.

“You came to the right place. Bucky’s the best in town. Not so good at people, as you probably saw,” Steve said with a laugh. “He’s a good guy. Great at the counter.” 

He accepted his coffee from her when they were ready, and led her to a table. “Here, sit with me a minute? I’ve been talking to Buck all day. I could use some real human interaction.”

“I can’t say I mind you using me,” Peggy said, then made herself blush and spoke quickly, “I mean, it’s good for you to have more social interaction. And I like talking to you.”

Steve gave her an amused look. “What’d you say your last name was, Bet?”

“I didn’t. It’s Carver,” she said, the flush from the nickname he gave her not entirely fake. It was awful to enjoy it so much when it wasn’t even her name.

“And what’s your story, Betty Carver?”

“You mean, what do I do for a living?”

Steve took a sip of his coffee and kept his eyes on her face. “Sure. Let’s start with that.”

“Well, nothing, right now,” Peggy said, making herself sound flustered as she adjusted her purse in her lap. “I needed a fresh start, and I've only ever done things for work that I could do anywhere, mostly secretarial stuff. I figured I may as well come to the city and see if I could get a job here.”

He studied her as she spoke, and seemed like he was about to comment when he reached for his phone, scanning whatever message was on his screen. “Seems like we’ll have to cut this short. But I’ll see you soon.”

“When?” 

“Whenever our schedules cross again, or you need another key copied,” he said, picking up his coffee and holding it up to her in a wave, before heading out.

She went back to the store to pick up her key. Barnes barely said two words to her as he handed it over with the keychain she’d purchased.

There was something off about the interaction with Steve and she found herself going over it for her entire walk home; she might have been too obvious and made him suspicious. She would slow down, she decided. Let him have one of his goons go through her apartment with the key of hers they’d likely copied while Steve distracted her, report back to him about how boring she was. There was nothing to imply she was anyone other than Betty Carver who kept her signature pink nail polish out on the coffee table next to a worn copy of  _ Eat, Pray, Love,  _ and who left dirty laundry on the floors of her bedroom.

Peggy got into the shower, deciding to take an outing the next day, give them time to go through her things. She’d make sure the place wasn’t too tidy before she left or else it’d have looked like she expected it. 

The bathroom was full of steam as she got out and wrapped herself in a towel, her wet hair limp against her shoulders. She thought about looking into getting a better color saving hair care regimen, as the smell of the shampoo and conditioner she’d picked randomly was starting to grate on her, and decided to add that to her outing tomorrow to give them even more time to search for something.

She stepped out of the bathroom and froze. Someone was in her kitchen. 

Her hand twitched as she tensed her arm to keep from reaching for a gun that wasn’t there. 

Steve Rogers twisted around where he was crouched by one of her cabinets, and smiled at her. “Wondered when you were gonna be done.”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, clutching her towel tighter around her. She let out a nervous chuckle. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“I came by to make you dinner, and the door was open. Figured I’d let myself in, make sure you were alright.” He turned back to searching for something, and stood up with the pot he’d found. “This looks almost new. You really don’t cook a lot, huh?”

“Not really,” Peggy said, and shifted on her feet. “Give me a few minutes?”

Steve looked over her, his eyes taking their time before meeting hers. “Take as long as you’d like.”

She smiled and tamped down the adrenaline, went to her bedroom and shut the door without locking it. She sat on her bed, took a deep breath, reminded herself she had a small gun hidden if she needed it, and she didn’t, so she was fine. She was fine.

Steve was clearly into playing power games. Peggy could handle that. She could beat him at it, if she wanted to. And she really, really did. She picked out a shirt for herself that would show an ample amount of cleavage, and a pair of leggings that she wore a thong under to avoid any panty lines.

Peggy had a feeling Steve Rogers was the type of man who appreciated no panty lines.

She did her make up light, both to save time and to keep him from thinking she was trying to impress. Now that he’d seen her without, she couldn’t overdo it. The simple touch ups might make her look more vulnerable to him, too. 

He didn’t look at her as she came out. 

“I’m glad you decided to stop by. Those tomatoes weren’t going to last much longer,” she said, watching him chop garlic on her cutting board, the tomatoes out and washed, his hand strong and sure on the knife.

“Just in time,” Steve said warmly, and motioned to a bottle he’d put on the table. “Brought a house warming present. You like rum? I don't have any mixers for you.”

“Love it,” Peggy said, smiling. “Is that all for me?”

“Why don’t you get yourself a glass and find out?” Steve glanced at her and she reveled in his reaction, his eyes going dark as he got a look at her generous cleavage. 

“What about the sauce?” Peggy asked, looking down at the stove where he was heating olive oil. “I don’t want to miss the recipe. I live in Brooklyn now so I need to cook for myself, and all that.”

He chuckled, tossing the minced garlic in the pot, and wiped his hands on her dish towel. “Get a glass, Betty. One for me, too.”

She bit her lip, wondering whether he enjoyed giving orders, or if he was simply trying to get her to drink. He could have laced it with something, she knew, and she went over her options as she got their glasses and filled them each with a few fingers worth. A quick look at the bottle was enough to tell how high the alcohol content was.

Part of her training had involved interrogations while under the influence of various substances, and she knew the extent to which she could tolerate three different chemical compounds that could make her lips loose. 

Rogers’ organization wasn’t known to use truth serums, but the Agency could have outdated information.

“Are you always this bossy?” she asked as she handed him his glass with a playful grin. 

He set the glass down on the counter. “I’m much worse. Take a sip.”

She did, not looking away. It was strong. “It’s good.”

“It’s expensive.”

“I’ve got expensive tastes, then.”

Steve ushered her closer with a flutter of a few fingers, and she stepped closer. “Chop up the tomatoes. We’re gonna toss ‘em in to simmer once the garlic’s softened up and flavored the oil.”

Peggy took the knife, making her motions a bit clumsy as she chopped them. “Should I put them in?”

He showed her how to use the back of the knife to scrape the pieces into the pot. “Don’t want to dull the knife.”

“Heaven forbid.”

Steve chuckled and added some spices, some milk he pulled from her fridge, and then gestured to the table. “Sit. We should finish our conversation from earlier. And you should finish your glass.”

She sat, took another sip. “A smarter girl might think you’re getting me drunk.”

“A smarter girl would have locked her door.” Steve joined her, leaned back, curled a loose hand around his glass. “You’re a secretary?”

She drank. “I was, for a local telephone company. But after I—”

“What company?”

“The Bell Company?”

“Where was that?” 

“Beaumont. In Texas. I grew up there.”

Steve brought the glass to his lips, set it back down. The level of rum in his glass hadn’t changed. “Who was your boss? What was his name?”

“Artie Teller. Why? Do you know the Company?”

“Did you like the job?”

Peggy shrugged. “It paid the bills. I studied psychology and economics in school, but never knew what I wanted to do with it.”

“Econ? Lotta numbers for a girl like you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, leaning her elbows on the table after she finished her glass. He refilled it for her with almost twice as much and nudged it closer to her. She drank. “Girl like me?”

“A girl with expensive tastes,” Steve teased. 

“I can have expensive tastes and know economics.” She allowed a slight slur in her voice, a slight narrow to her eyes. 

Steve tapped a finger lightly on his glass. “Have some more.”

She drank. Betty was naive, overly trusting, but she wasn’t an idiot. “You’re trying to get me drunk. Why?”

“You’ve been trying to find me the past few days. Why?”

“I didn’t know you’d be at the locksmith,” Peggy argued, exaggerating her Southern accent a smidge more. She neared the end of her second glass. 

"But you have been looking for me." He watched her, unwavering. “What’s with all the flirting?”

“Is it illegal for a girl to know what she wants?” Peggy sat back. “You’re the one coming here, giving me a lot to drink. That’s flirty. Verging on creepy.”

Steve picked his glass up and took a real sip this time. “That’s a good point.” He stood, getting up and offering her a hand. “C’mere, let’s get the pasta started.”

He spent the rest of the evening making easy conversation about their dinner, the places in the area he thought she should visit, and funny stories about his friend Bucky—though he gave nothing away about him that would be of any use to her. He kept her glass full, and had made it through a glass and a half of his own by the time they were washing dishes together, which likely meant it wasn’t spiked with anything.

There was something oddly domestic, intimate about him drying the dishes after she did the washing up. She couldn’t tell if that was part of his attempt to intimidate her, to flirt with her, or if he was the type of person that wouldn’t allow himself to leave before the dishes were done.

“Thank you for teaching me to cook. I’m surprised the sauce was that good for how easy it was,” she said, feeling the buzz of alcohol behind her eyes, the weightless feeling in her thighs, the looseness to her hands. 

“Is that you kicking me out?” Steve chuckled as he hung the dish towel.

“Did you want to stay?” 

She pressed her lips together as Steve moved closer. He tucked a frizzy curl behind her ear. She wondered how far he’d go. 

Peggy had assumed she’d need to sleep with him, or get close to it, for this job, but she hated the idea of not being sober for it. She tried to judge if she could fight him off based on his weight and size and the other fights she’d gotten into at this level of inebriation, all the while keeping her expression soft, dazed.

“I’d like to,” Steve started, and pressed a kiss to her cheek, “but not tonight.”

“Oh,” Peggy said, letting out a soft breath, not hiding all of her relief. “Some other time.”

Steve grabbed his jacket from the table and pulled it on, his shirt straining over his chest as he did. It was perfectly in character for her to stare, so she did. “Some other time. And you’d better be more careful about keeping your door locked," he warned. "You never know who could wander in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can find me on tumblr as sagesiren if you want to say hi! :)


	3. Chapter 3

A week went by. Then another. Peggy was half expecting Steve to let himself into her flat again, to wake up with him standing over her. She knew that was all part of his plan, that he wanted to make her wary, intimidated, keep himself a constant in her thoughts. She hated that it was working.

Peggy did her best to stick to a regular routine as Betty, waiting for him to make the next move, although she couldn't stop herself from going out of her way to walk on the same side of the street as Shield & Key. Somehow, she never saw him coming or going. 

After a third week - a full month now into her assignment - she decided to check in about changing the timeline.

She called the local library to ask the hours, one of the codes on Betty's tapped phone.

Fran was entering their building while Peggy left, which meant a twenty minute long conversation that began about the weather, took a detour to Fran’s three grandchildren, and ended with the pipe that was leaking under Fran’s sink. 

“It’s terrible. The super never answers his phone. Everyone with their cell phones nowadays, and no one even picks up,” she said, shaking her head with a huff.

Peggy adjusted her purse on her shoulder. If she were herself, she could fix it. Betty had likely never held a wrench in her life. “Is there a handyman you could call?”

“Well, there’s Steve, but he’s always so busy.” Fran frowned and put her hands on her hips, her bag of groceries forgotten on the floor. “Getting a hold of him might be as hard as reaching our good-for-nothing super.”

“You know Steve?” Peggy asked, surprised as both herself and as Betty.

“Who doesn’t know him?” Fran laughed. “He comes to the senior home and plays cards with us. Lost a few bucks to me in poker the other day.”

“I met him at the store. And bumped into him a few times. He cooked me dinner once,” Peggy said with a tentative smile.

“Oh, I heard him come by. Nothing happens in this building that I don’t know about,” Fran said with a wink. “He’s a nice young man. So stressed, that boy, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders.”

“He seems… intense,” Peggy said, fishing for information on his organization. 

Fran nodded. “He cares about the neighborhood. I won’t keep you, though. You’re off to where again?”

“The library,” Peggy reminded with a forced cheerful smile. She’d much rather talk more about Steve. “I’m going to see if they have any positions. None of the other places are getting back to me.”

“Good luck, honey,” Fran said, picking up her bag of groceries. “I’ll see if the senior center’s looking for any help, too.”

Peggy knew they weren’t, as she’d looked into every entry level job in Brooklyn that Betty could potentially apply to, but as she thanked Fran and headed out she reminded herself that she had learned more about Steve from that interaction, so it wasn’t entirely a waste.

She stopped by the front desk and chatted genially with the librarian, acting shocked to hear that there weren’t any positions available that she was qualified for. She left a copy of her CV to make the entire interaction seem more plausible, and hoped it might somehow make its way back to Steve, then wandered through the stacks. She picked up a book that Betty might be interested in, and went over to an empty table to start reading. 

A few minutes passed. There was a soft scuff of a chair moving over the worn carpeted floors by the other end of the table. A man cleared his throat and she glanced over.

Jack Thompson made a show of looking at his watch. She ignored it, looked back at her book, not willing to break her cover to roll her eyes at the most annoying American she’d ever been forced to work with. It wasn’t her fault she was late. 

Peggy made it a few more pages before she heard Jack stand and walk away, leaving his book on the table. She looked curiously at the book he’d left, got up to grab it and read the spine as if she was truly interested, then nodded in approval to herself. 

Once she was back at home, safely in her flat, she combed through the book until she found the note written for her. 

_ Stay the course, _ it read.  _ Get a job and intercept in six months. Being a boring bimbo should be easy for you. _

She took particular pleasure in setting Jack’s note on fire, watching his unnecessary last comment fall to ash in her sink. She lit a candle to cover the smell of smoke and reassessed the plan.

Phillips expected her to wait six months until even starting to get access to Steve’s organization.

No. No, that wouldn’t do. Steve would lose interest. The game he was playing with her would fizzle out, and he’d move on, forgetting about Betty entirely. To keep her value to him, she had to keep being fun.

She could do fun. Even if fun meant taking an unauthorized risk. 

Peggy waited by her apartment door the next day, stepping out as soon as she heard Fran leaving for her morning stroll around the park, and turned to lock her door as if she didn't notice her.

"Betty! What are you doing out so early?" Fran asked, coming over.

Peggy smiled. Reliable Fran. "Going out to ask about a few more jobs today. What about you?"

"Headed to Greenwood. It's unseasonably warm today, could you tell? My door always sticks a little more."

Peggy gave her door a look. "Mine too. I was wondering what that was. Oh, how is your leak situation? I was thinking about you all day yesterday after we talked!"

Fran sighed. "Still leaking." 

"You ought to call Steve," Peggy suggested, touching Fran's shoulder. “You don’t want the problem to get worse.”

“I’m thinking about it.” Fran raised an eyebrow at her. “You could call him yourself.”

“Me? Why would I do that?” She blushed a little, adjusted her hand on her purse. “He wouldn’t want to talk to me, anyway.”

“Hm.” Fran smiled. “I’ll reach out to him.”

She clearly kept to her word. Peggy returned in the early afternoon. She adjusted her pencil skirt once she made it to the landing, the material bunched up around her thighs, and looked up in manufactured surprise at Steve leaning against her doorway with his arms crossed over his chest. Excitement flooded her chest, down her sternum and to her stomach. This was the right choice; to build trust, she needed to interact with him. 

"Your neighbor has this theory that you're trying to see me," he said, eyes raking over her legs, the dark grey skirt against her pale skin.

"She's right," Peggy admitted, glancing down at her keys with a small smile. She motioned for him to move away from the lock so she could open it. "Did you fix her sink?”

“I did.” She held the door open for him. His face was wrinkled. Caught off guard by her honesty, hopefully. He stepped inside. “So?”

Peggy pulled her heels off, setting them neatly by the door. “It's embarrassing, but I was wondering if I could ask a favor of you?"

"What do you need?"

"A job.” Peggy made a face at herself. "I had a few interviews this week, and have been asking for jobs in the community, but nothing is panning out." 

"You want me to give you a job?" Steve asked. He raised an eyebrow as if to say,  _ do you really think I'm that much of an idiot? _

And no, she didn’t. But she was starting to understand him. 

At least, she hoped she was. If this plan backfired, he’d likely write her off entirely, get her a job and let her sink into the background oblivion of his neighborhood.

Betty only knew about his one business, so she frowned. "Not unless you're firing your bubbly friend who works as your locksmith. You know this neighborhood, and all the people here. If you could put in a good word for me? Or tell me about a place you know that’s hiring?"

Steve still didn’t seem convinced. "You could broaden the scope of your search. There's plenty of secretary jobs in Manhattan."

She slipped out of her yellow cardigan, revealing a frilly, light pink - slightly transparent - blouse beneath it. The skirt was one of Peggy's own, but the shirt and sweater combo were colors she herself would never wear. She lay the cardigan over the back of the couch and went to the kitchen to get herself a glass of water. 

"Honestly, the cost of commuting would be too much for me, especially on an entry level salary. I like the idea of walking to work, too." Poor Betty, not knowing that any big employer worth their salt in a city would either give their employees a metro card, or would have access to a program that made it more affordable.

Steve didn’t point this out to her, which was promising. Not so interested in having her work out of the borough, then.

"I might be able to help," Steve said, the easy charm back in his voice, and she turned back toward him. 

“Really? Gosh, I’d appreciate it so much. I'm burning through my savings faster than I expected!” She laughed at herself again. He was eating it up. Maybe he enjoyed the idea of a damsel in distress. She could use that to her advantage.

Steve stroked her cardigan, hand brushing over it lightly as if she’d feel the touch on her skin. The back of her neck prickled. "Do you want anything to drink?" she asked, pulling him out of his reverie.

"No, thank you." He kept his eyes on her as she filled her glass with water. "I’ll make a call. But I’d like a favor from you, in exchange."

"What would you like?" Peggy said, coming back with her glass. She wanted to roll her eyes at how eager she sounded. "I'll do anything."

"I'll let you know when I figure it out," he said, with an inscrutable look, “and when I know about a job for you.”

“Don’t keep me waiting too long.” She took a sip of water, looking up at him through her eyelashes. 

He kept her waiting three weeks. Peggy was down to Betty's last two thousand dollars, and was thinking that she’d actually have to find herself a job soon if she wanted to keep paying her rent. She was scrolling through takeout options on her phone when a message popped up from a number she didn’t have in her contacts.

_ Piers Park. 3pm. _

There was no name, and the Agency wouldn’t be bold enough to send something to her phone.

She’d been handing out enough resumes in town with the hopes Steve would pilfer a copy from someone, and yet expecting to hear from him didn’t make it any less of a thrill.

This was her favorite part of undercover ops, something she’d missed even at a desk job that she loved.

Peggy got to the park early and explored while she waited. It was her first time in this particular part of the neighborhood. The sun was trying to poke through the clouds, and a stray sunbeam glinted off the freedom tower, the Manhattan skyline a matte silhouette behind it. She snapped a few pictures and sent one to a ‘friend’ from Betty’s her hometown, someone created as part of her backstory, run by another agent.

The birds chirped happily in the near-empty park, seagulls squawking on the outcropping of rocks. She leaned against the railing by the water and took in a breath of seaweed air.

“Glad you came,” Steve said, materializing next to her. He leaned sideways against the railing, watching her instead of the view. He was in a suit jacket, more formal than she’d seen him. Likely on his way home from church. 

He looked terribly attractive in it. 

“I don’t usually do that with near-strangers,” she joked, and made herself look sheepish at flirting so openly, unabashedly. “Please tell me you found a job for me?”

Steve pulled an envelope from inside his jacket. It was blank, taped shut, and near bursting at the seams. Whatever information was inside, there was a lot of it. “You need to do something for me first.”

“You want me to mail that?” she asked, confusion wrinkling her brow. “There’s a mailbox just down the street.”

“I want you to deliver this to a friend of mine.” He held it out, eyes boring into her. 

The wind picked up, her blonde curls blowing around her face. She held her peacoat closed and looked at the envelope as if it might explode. “What’s the catch?” 

“No catch.” Steve stepped closer, keeping his voice even despite the static of the wind. She took it from him, still staring at it in her hand. “I’d like for you to hang onto it, bring it to someone for me in a week.”

It was nondescript, nothing discernibly suspicious about it. It was taped shut with a single piece of scotch tape, easy to open and replace. “After I deliver it you’ll put in a good word for me?”

“I’ll have a guaranteed job for you to start the next day.”

“What’s in the envelope?” she asked, deciding it was an innocent question. Any idiot would ask that.

Steve took the envelope back from her, and her stomach sank. She'd overstepped, asked too much, but he tucked it into the pocket of her coat. His hand was warm through the material of the pocket. He kept it there, the back of a finger rubbing against her hip. Her skin felt hot through the multiple layers of fabric.

“It’s a letter for my mother. It’s personal.”

One of the first things in the dossier on Steven Rogers was that his father had died before he was born, and that his mother had passed while he was a teenager. Betty wouldn't know this.

“And why am I hanging onto it for a week?” 

“She’s out of town.” He brought his hand out of her pocket and buttoned her coat for her. “She lives in Bay Ridge. I’ll give you her address when she’s back.”

“Why aren’t you—”

“So curious, Bet.” He spent extra time with the top button, sliding his thumb over it. “Don’t you trust me?”

Peggy tilted forward, his gravity pulling her in. Her eyes were drawn to his lips, the stubble growing around them. He hadn’t had time to shave for church. He must have been busy that morning. If she were thinking about anything other than how scratchy he would feel against her lips, she’d want to look into why that was, but she was rather preoccupied. 

“Yes,” she breathed. 

“Give me your phone, Betty.”

“My phone?”

He raised an eyebrow at her. She handed it over. 

“Good girl. I’ll hang onto this for you.”

“I’m not a dog.” It slipped out before she meant it to, with an unintentional flush on her cheeks. Betty should be more docile than that. “How are you going to get me the address if I don’t have my phone?” she asked, more like Betty, less like Peggy.

Steve chuckled, the sound deep in his throat. He pocketed her phone. “I’ll find a way. Password?”

Peggy bit her lip and glanced at his pocket. She took a moment to appreciate his well tailored trousers. “My birthday. I’m guessing you somehow know when that is?”

“Now you’re getting the hang of things.” He stood up straight; he’d been leaning toward her as well. That realization made the corner of lips quirk up. 

“I’m a fast learner.”

He tucked a piece of windblown hair behind her ear. “We’ll be in touch,” he promised, and brushed past her.

She twisted as he left, his dark jacket easy to follow as his shape grew smaller against the grey-green of the dead grass, the overcast day. Peggy touched the envelope in the pocket of her coat, the paper still heated from where it’d been held against his chest.

A gust pushed her hair in her face again and she turned toward the choppy water as she assessed the unmoored feeling washing over her. 

She was cut off from any Agency contact, and her cover was about to be tested as he combed through her mobile. But the part that really gnawed at her was the thought of not seeing him again for another week. 

That in itself was enough to worry her for the entirety of her cold walk home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're in the mood to stare at these characters and also feel overwhelmed by/scream about how talented people are, check out this gifset:
> 
> https://beautifulwhensarcastic.tumblr.com/post/613939389551296512/evil-steve-and-undercover-peggy-a-continuation-of
> 
> I've legit been going back and forth between staring at these gifs and writing today, it's so amazing!!!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well this chapter made me look up the difference between M and E ratings to make sure this still fit. There may be a potential rating change in the future, so, yeah. Fair warning.

The letter sat on Peggy's desk, untouched. She'd debated opening it, even knowing that this was a test; she trusted herself to handle it without getting caught, and if there was some sort of tangible proof in there, she could be done with her case and go home. 

It would be a gamble, though. If there was nothing useful, she could give herself away and find herself cut off from his organization, or dumped in the East River with cinder blocks tied to her ankles.

If there was useful Intel inside, it may not be as helpful as playing the long game and becoming a trusty sidekick. 

And that was only part of the problem. Without her mobile, she was cut off from the easiest communication with the Agency. Should she make a post on Betty's Facebook about having lost her phone? An agent was likely monitoring her page, but would it look more or less suspicious than saying nothing at all? 

Steve might not have put as much thought into his moves as how much consideration she took with her counter-moves, but he certainly was trying to figure her out, moving the pawns on the chessboard - the phone, the envelope, the key to her flat - while sitting from his comfortable spot as King. Peggy would be King of the opposing color. Betty would hopefully become his Queen. 

The trick was convincingly playing against herself. 

She made her decisions to leave the envelope and make a brief post on her page, and go about Betty's business as usual while counting down the days.

Exactly one week later, Peggy stood in her building’s entryway, mailbox open as she thumbed through the credit card offers, new restaurant menus, and a flyer from Betty's city councilman. She was distracted enough by the ethics of participating in a local election while undercover that she almost missed the slip of paper that fell to the floor. It was folded in half once, sharply creased. Inside was an address handwritten in messy script. 

Her heartbeat jumped in the way she was starting to associate with the thrill of seeing Steve again. 

She grabbed her things from her flat, tucked the letter in a larger purse of hers so it wouldn’t get crushed, searched the address on her computer, and committed the directions to memory. The street view of the map had shown her the house: nondescript, two-stories, down by the army base at the lower left corner of Brooklyn. It could have been a power play for Steve to operate there, right under the government’s nose.

Or, knowing him, he could have people at the base on his payroll as well. It was more than likely. 

The whole trip wouldn't take her long, and after riding the R train to the end of the line, it was a short walk. Bay Ridge felt to her like a suburb rather than a city, even more so than some of the other parts of Brooklyn she'd explored, with its churches, long rows of what appeared to be single family houses, and people affluent enough to own a car that could take them everywhere the subway didn't reach.

The day was warmer than she was expecting, another one of New York's teases of spring before the winter dug in its heels again, but despite the sun warming her face and her winter coat tight around her, she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye, felt hair on her arms rising.

Betty stopped to fix her shoe after getting it caught in the uneven sidewalk. She leaned against a store front and smiled apologetically at the people she'd cut off to step to the side.

This gave Peggy the opportunity to look around. There was a man, one and a half street blocks behind her, stopped at a produce stall on the street. He'd been on the subway platform as she'd boarded the train.

Someone else was leaning against the wall reading a paper, and caught the other man's eye. They were dressed casually, clean cut. She looked away before they noticed. 

Not typical street thugs. Likely Steve’s men. She started waking again, paying them no attention as Betty wouldn’t. 

And it was hard not to acknowledge them. They were hardly being discreet about it.

Peggy could see their reflection in the store window, and they were getting closer, only a few paces behind her, but Betty wouldn’t notice a tail the way she could.

Unless this was all part of the game. Maybe she was thinking too much like an agent. Betty, a single woman in a part of the city she was unfamiliar with would be well aware of two men following her. She turned a corner, and then another, and found herself walking down a long stretch of sidewalk below a bridge, the exhaust from the cars above her tainting the air. 

She’d only gone a little out of her way, believable enough if she was trying to make sure she was safe, and glanced back over her shoulder more obviously than any agent ever would. They were still there, but further back. She reached her hand into her purse to fumble for her pepper spray. She kept it in her fist as she made it to the right street and found the right house. Up the walkway, she shut and locked the gate, taking the chance to look back. This time, there was no one behind her. 

Peggy climbed the steps and knocked on the door.

No answer.

She tried again, then rang the bell. Still nothing. She double checked the address, but was sure this was it. 

Without her phone, and no way to contact Steve, her best option was to wait.

She sat on the front steps and looked around the yard, trying to deduce things about whoever lived there based on the state of it. There were no kids toys, the grass was mowed, hedges trimmed. This kept her busy for the first twenty minutes.

Two hours later when Steve strolled down the block, she was furious.

"Why do I have a feeling your mother isn't here?" she asked, standing and crossing her arms. 

"Apparently she moved a few years ago. Must've slipped my mind." He smirked. 

She huffed, pulled the envelope from her purse, and shoved it toward him. "Does that mean this was all some joke? I really do need that job, Steve."

He examined the envelope, turning it over in his hands. Unopened, untampered. She’d made the right call. "You've got the job, if you want it."

"Who'd you call about the job?" she asked, near to crossing her fingers.

"No one. The job's with me. What do you think?"

Peggy pursed her lips, hiding her smile. "What are the benefits?" 

Steve laughed. It sounded like it was startled out of him. "You keep surprising me, Betty." He tilted his head toward the gate and started toward the sidewalk. She followed, came up beside him.

"I need to know what I'm going to be doing for you," she pointed out, letting Betty's anger deflate now that hers had. She dropped her arms to her side. "Does that mean you're firing Bucky?"

"It means I want you as my secretary. You've got that economics degree under your belt, right?" He glanced over at her, eyes darting over her waist as if he was thinking about what else was under there. 

"I do."

"You know excel?"

"Of course."

"Perfect." Steve held his elbow out to her and she slipped a hand into the crook of it. 

Somehow, the gesture felt less gentlemanly, and more like he didn't want her to get too far away. 

"When do I get my cell phone back?"

"You don't. I've got a new one for you. A newer model than what you had. Consider it a starting bonus."

He stopped them when they made it to the subway entrance. Peggy’s fingers curled against his arm, not yet willing to let go. “When do I start?” 

“Tomorrow. Be at Shield & Key at nine. You have a computer at home?”

“An old laptop.”

“Good. Bring that.” 

Peggy looked up at him. “You can replace my phone but need me to use my own computer?”

“All of my tech budget went to your new cell,” Steve teased, taking her hand from his elbow and holding it in his for a moment, before placing it at her side. “See you tomorrow.”

She got herself there at eight fifty the next morning; earlier than asked, not early enough to appear like she was snooping around. Bucky showed up a few minutes after her and let her in without a word. “It’s good to see you again,” she said, injecting extra cheer into her voice. Betty was, unfortunately, a morning person. 

“Uh huh,” Bucky responded, going behind the desk to start fiddling with something. She adjusted her purse on her shoulder. It was the largest she had, and could just fit her laptop and charger, but it would be heavy for Betty, who wouldn’t be used to carrying that sort of weight. 

“Do you know when Steve’s going to get here?” she asked, looking at the door to the back office purposefully.

Bucky didn’t look up. “He’ll get here when he gets here,” he said. How helpful. 

“Right,” Peggy said, and bit her lip. She had some of her hair pulled back, the rest down in curls around her face. Her make up was subtle, noticeable for anyone paying attention to it, the pink shade of her lips matching both her nails and her heels. Her shirt was grey with white stripes, and a grey skirt that was just shy of passing her knees. 

It was an outfit that said innocent, professional, and perhaps a little naive. She favored darker colors, earth tones, reds. Betty liked pink far too much for her taste.

Bucky worked with a key, his fingers adept despite working with one hand. She hadn't paid much attention to his prosthetic arm before this, but watching him now found herself fascinated with how he worked. 

He caught her eye and she blushed, looked away, busied herself with her purse until Steve came in. 

“Morning,” he said.

“Good morning.” Peggy smiled. He brought her behind the counter and pulled out a key to open the office door.

Bucky didn’t even have access to his office without him there. Interesting. 

She’d read in Steve's dossier on what the other agents had found in his office, and had been imagining a bleak room, boxes stacked high, white stained walls over old tile, and an imposing desk with weapons piled atop it.

Instead, they walked into what appeared more like an office you’d find in an old home, bookshelves lining the dark paneled walls, an oriental rug covering the majority of the hardwood floor, soft lighting from lamps placed around the room, ten filing cabinets, a small desk in the corner by the door, and a larger desk toward the back of the room with a tall chair.

“This is where you’ll be working,” Steve said, walking to the closer, smaller desk, and started stacking the file folders that were laid out on it. “Most of what you’ll be doing is compiling information for me, putting it all into an easy to navigate file.”

Peggy pulled her computer out and set it on the desk. Her purple computer case had a flowery decal. “I can do that.”

He motioned for her to sit in the rolling chair, and leaned over her to open her computer for her. “Password?”

“My birthday,” Peggy said. 

He rested a hand on the back of her chair, and snorted as he typed it in. “Yeah, we’ll change that for you. Something more secure.”

Her internet browser popped up, showing her Facebook page, a Buzzfeed quiz about which Disney princess Betty was, and an article about how to fix up your resume.

She’d prepared the websites the night before.

“Start a new spreadsheet,” Steve said. His mouth was right near her ear. 

Peggy opened excel, and twisted to look up at him, her face inches from his. 

“Get all the information in those folders organized how you see fit. I’ll look over it at the end of the day.” His hand on the back of the chair brushed her neck before he stood and went to his desk. She swiveled in her chair to follow him as he continued. “I’ve got some work of my own to do. Take lunch whenever you want. And go out, when you do. Don’t order in.” 

“Anything else you need from me, Sir?” Peggy asked, a calculated move that landed well. He grinned as he sat.

“You just keep looking pretty,” he said, opening his laptop. His hands were hidden from her as he typed in his password.

Sorting through the files gave her strings of numbers and dates, but so far no usable intel to tie him to a crime. Her best guess would be that it was shipping dates, arrival dates, amount of items received, and some kind of code to identify both the container and the type of item itself. 

The day passed quickly as she organized the data, inputting numbers and adding a few algorithms to tally totals for some of the columns. 

Steve was gone when she returned from her lunch break. It would have been a good opportunity to explore his office, but for all she knew it was another test, another chance to catch her in the act. She sat back down and got back to work. He came back a half hour later with a bag. She saw him set it under his desk in the reflection of her computer screen.   
  
  


As the time ticked closer to five p.m., Steve called her name. “Come to my desk for a minute.”

She saved her work and walked over, leaned back against his desk. She crossed her ankles and watched him pull a bottle of wine out of the bag below his desk. 

“What’s the occasion?” Peggy asked. They were close enough that she could smell his aftershave, a scent she was getting more and more familiar with.

He pulled out his keys, flipped open the corkscrew out his pocket knife. “Your first successful day,” he said as he poured the wine into two mugs on his desk. One had a geometric map of Brooklyn on it, the borough made up of small triangles, some of which appeared to be colored in by hand as if he'd gotten bored at the desk. The other had a grainy photograph of the Statue of Liberty wearing sunglasses, a dog wearing a hot dog costume, and a smiling taxi cab—the sort of thing you’d find at a cheap tourist shop.

“All I did was set up a spreadsheet,” Peggy said with a laugh. “You haven’t even looked at it yet.”

  
  


“Still worth celebrating,” Steve said, and handed her the Statue of Liberty mug. He clinked it against his, moving his chair close enough that his knee brushed against her leg.

She smiled and took a sip. “If I knew the bar was this low, I would have asked you for a job weeks ago.”

He laughed, warm and deep. “You could have. I’ve been looking for someone with your particular skill set for a while.” His eyes trailed over her torso, the way the blouse pulled at the chest. She’d normally pin the gaps shut on a blouse like this, but hadn’t bothered for his benefit. She had a white lacy bra on beneath it. 

Peggy hummed and licked a drop of wine from above her lip. “Does that mean I should start bargaining for a raise?”

“You’ll have to do a lot more than play with excel to get a raise.”

His eyes were dark, twinkling, and she knew a challenge when she saw one. Peggy slipped her foot out of its pink heel and lifted it up to rest on his thigh. “What else will I have to play with?”

Steve put his hand on her leg, slid it just under the material of her skirt, bunched up indecently high from how her legs were positioned. He could easily see the panties she was wearing. She curled her toes against his thigh. “What do you have in mind?” he asked. She prided herself on the way his voice had dropped.

She took a long sip from her mug, set it down, spread her legs another inch apart. “I thought I could—” 

A knock at the door cut her off. 

Steve licked his lips, moved his hand more to the inside of her thigh. His touch was heavy, heated. She wondered if he would keep her from closing her legs if she tried. “Come in,” he called.

Peggy couldn’t care less about being found in a compromising position with him, but Betty blushed, started to move her foot back to the floor and adjust her skirt as the door opened.

“No. Stay.” Steve’s other hand caught her ankle with an iron grip, and set her foot back on his leg. He didn’t look away from her eyes. The intensity of it had her blood pulsing between her thighs. She was sure he could feel it from where his hand was. 

She twisted around to glance at who it was only when he looked to the door.  Betty was embarrassed, blushing, but not ashamed. 

“Your brother’s on the phone,” Bucky said. His lips turned down as he took in their position.

She was certain Steve didn’t have a brother. “Tell him I’ll call him back,” he replied, shaking his head and looking back to Peggy, the hungry expression still in his eyes.

“It sounds important.”

Steve blew out a breath. “Tell him I’ll be a minute.”

Bucky shut the door. Peggy looked down at Steve. “Do you want me to go?”

“No,” Steve said, giving her thigh a squeeze before he let go of her ankle, pulled her to stand so he could tug her skirt back into place, “but duty calls. Go home, Betty.”

She hadn’t had enough wine to make her tipsy, but she couldn’t remember the walk home for the life of her.

When she got inside, she scribbled the layout of the office, anything that might seem important - such as the collections of books he had, to where the floor creaked in case she needed to sneak in - in a small journal, and hid it under a floorboard. She ate a quick dinner, played around on the new phone that he’d given her, and got herself into bed.

Peggy had kept herself from thinking about the way he touched her for the last few hours. Now, trying to sleep, she stared at the ceiling, and was unable to think about anything else.

She swore at herself. She shimmied her sleep shorts off.

Steve’s fingers had started on the outside of her thigh, and that’s where she put hers, dragging her fingertips along the path of heat that his hand left. She closed her eyes and imagined it was him that was touching her, that he made it to the elastic of her panties on the inside of her thigh, pushed them aside.

His fingers would feel better than her own, thicker, more relentless. She could hear his voice, picture his eyes watching her, the dark of his pupils growing as he moved inside her.

He’d draw it out, too. Leave her wet, wanting. She sucked in a breath and held it as the feeling swelled, imagined his hand at her throat, not letting up until...

Peggy sagged into her bed, panting. 

Fuck. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, this fic is officially rated E (to be on the safe side for this chapter, though it seems like it'll really earn that rating pretty soon ;)

Her work went by quickly the next day, as she input all of the data from the seemingly infinite number of file folders, full of handwritten, and some nearly incoherent logs. Others had numbers crossed off or lines cut out. The further back she went, the less organized it all became. Steve worked diligently from his desk, taking a few phone calls where he spoke about vague things that were meant to be indecipherable to Betty, and left Peggy feeling puzzled, too.

She kept checking the time on her computer, but as the minutes pushed them closer to the end of the day, Steve didn’t mention another drink despite the bottle of wine still sitting on his desk.

He disappeared before the top of the hour. Bucky came in to relieve her when she hadn't left by ten after five.

“Will you tell Steve I said to have a good night?” she asked.

Bucky grunted and shut the office door behind her.

This continued for weeks. Peggy didn’t know whether she was more frustrated at herself for failing to properly seduce him, or for thinking she’d gotten further with him than she had. 

The worst case scenario was that Steve had gotten bored of her, but that was fine. And she reminded herself of that multiple times each day. It didn’t matter; she was in his organization, and handling all of the numbers for his imports and exports. It was fine.

Just as Peggy could handle the rejection with ease, Betty would be glad to still have the job, even though Steve was giving her the cold shoulder. He paid her almost double minimum wage, so she kept her head down, started wearing less revealing clothing, focused on the work itself. No need to appear desperate. That would only turn Steve away even more.

Over the next few months she started to see patterns in the numbers, the same shipments coming in on the same dates - assuming she was correct about what the numbers represented, and she was rarely wrong when it came to figuring out codes - and the same amounts of items being logged. 

Every now and then when Steve was spending more time around her, or had leaned over her to point at her computer and ask something, she’d repay it in kind, lean over Steve’s desk later in the day with her laptop and point out any discrepancies, any idea she had for improving organization. “This doesn’t seem right,” she would say, tapping the screen. “I’m putting in what I’m reading, but something happened between these columns that doesn't seem consistent. Is that right?”

“Unfortunately,” Steve would say, or “Yes, it’s all written down correctly,” or “Yep,” if he was feeling especially verbose. Some days he wouldn’t even look up from what he was doing. She never was able to get a good look at what exactly that was. 

Every now and then he would give her more folders, and that was it for their communication.

But it was fine. Peggy was fine with it. She wasn’t losing sleep over it. She happened to be sleeping quite well, thanks to her active imagination and use of her two hands.

She used Facebook messenger on her new phone to send coded messages to her ‘friend,’ chatted genially with Fran, saw the timeline for the mission stretch longer and longer in front of her. 

Spring settled properly across the city. Brooklyn bloomed with children laughing on the streets, couples putting chairs on the sidewalk to chat with their neighbors, the sunsets occurring a little later and lighting up the avenues as they did.

On the sort of day where Peggy had smelled the cherry blossoms on the breeze from the Botanical Garden in the morning, and lamented the back office's lack of a window that she could open, or through which she could at least appreciate the sun, Steve stopped by her desk. He'd just finished taking a call in the front of the store, clearly so she wouldn't overhear it. "More files?" Peggy asked, looking up expectantly.

"An invite," he said, handing her a scrap of paper with an address and time on it from the top of the pile he was holding. "Thought you might want to get to know some of the other employees.”

Keeping her head down and doing the work paid off, apparently. Even if he had gotten bored of Betty.

“Employees from the store?” she asked, pulling her brows together just so. 

“I’ve got a few other businesses going on,” he said with a slight shrug. 

“Are they what generate all this data?” She gave him a sheepish smile at the question, like she shouldn’t have noticed that something was off in the first place. But she needed Betty to be good at her job, now. Otherwise Steve would have no reason to keep her. “I was wondering how you managed that here when you get one or two customers a day.”

Steve grinned. “Stop by tonight. The door will be propped open, and you can head right up to the roof.”

She shut her laptop, leaving it in the office as she'd been doing from the first day, and started to go through Betty's clothes as soon as she was home. She chose a long yellow dress with black polka dots and a black band around the waist, with simple beige wedges to complement it. Flattering, soft colors, but nothing that said she was trying too hard to impress. 

If Steve was over her, over the thrill of their flirtation, so be it. She could still get what she needed simply by becoming a trusted employee, which she was well on the way toward if the invite was any indication. Meeting the other people working for him was a big step.

The address was the same building where the Agency’s latest intel said Steve lived. As she climbed the stairs she tried to look at the doors, figure out which apartment belonged to Steve, but there wasn’t anything that might give it away.

She checked the time to make sure she wasn’t too early or too late—twenty-five minutes after the get together was set to begin seemed a safe arrival bet. She knocked lightly on the roof door that was propped open with a cooler, her other hand holding a box of cookies from a local bakery.

There was a mat of fake grass rolled out, a ring of outdoor seating around it; lawn chairs with various pillows, a canvas loveseat, a plastic wicker chair with a thickly cushioned seat. A self-standing fire pit stood in the center of it all where a man knelt next to it, adjusting the logs and leaning his face dangerously close to blow on it. A puff of sparks came up and he recoiled. “ _Merde_ ,” he muttered, before reaching once again for a log.

The man from the bodega, Jimmy, was there, as was Bucky, manning a grill that was a meter from the circle. A handful of others she didn’t recognize were scattered around. One of the men, with reddish hair, a large mustache and a larger laugh, had a woman sitting on one of his knees, both of them nursing beers. 

“Then I told him, I said, ‘You think I’m paying for her for tonight?’ And god, if you could see the idiotic look on his face,” he said, letting out another boisterous laugh. The girl on his lap was grinning, her beer looking most of the way gone.

“My hero,” she said, gave a peck to his cheek, and stood to go and check on the food. 

Steve caught Peggy’s eye from his seat in the wicker chair, and held up his beer in greeting. “Betty! Glad you made it,” he called, and motioned to the empty seat next to him. All eyes went to her.

She came over, looking at her audience shyly before focusing on Steve. “I brought cookies,” she said, tipping up the inflection to make it sound like a question. “My parents always said I shouldn’t show up to a party empty handed.”

“Told you she was sweet,” Steve said, turning to look at one of the men who replied in an English accent, “None of us were doubting that, Rogers.” 

It’d been months since she’d been in England at this point, long enough that it startled her to hear, though she kept herself from visibly reacting.

Steve stood, took the cookies in his arm and touched his hand to her waist. “You want a beer?”

“Please." She sat in one of the two open spots on the loveseat as he grabbed her a bottle from the cooler by the door.

She gave a little wave, still feeling everyone staring. “I’m Betty,” she said, especially cognizant of her American accent now, “but I feel like you all knew that.”

The woman came over from the grill and smiled, sitting next to her. “I’m Angie,” she said, her New York accent stronger than the rest of theirs, and held out a hand. Betty shook it. “Are you one of the new girls in the neighborhood?”

From the context of the larger man’s story, Peggy could guess what she was asking. Betty wasn’t quite so quick. 

“I am. Just moved in a few months ago.”

Bucky snickered by the grill.

“She works for me,” Steve explained, and handed Peggy a beer. 

“So do I, sugar,” Angie teased, leaning back and crossing her legs. 

Betty looked between them, lost. Steve handed her a bottle opener. She struggled for a believable amount of time before getting the cap off. “Are you a secretary, too?” she asked Angie, handing it back to Steve and ignoring the brush of their fingers. It was accidental. Nothing to pay attention to.

It was fine.

“I’m a companion,” Angie said with a wink. “The type that charges by the hour.”

Peggy turned to Steve, eyes wide. “You’re a _pimp_?” 

“No,” Steve said with a warm laugh, “no, Angie’s a friend. She gets to know a lot of people in her line of work, so I supplement her income when she tells me useful things.”

“He’s being modest,” Angie said, shaking her head. “He protects me and the other girls in the neighborhood. Keeps us safe if we run into any trouble with our bosses.”

“This is all privileged information,” the Englishman said, leaning forward and eyeing her warily. 

“She’s clean, Falsworth,” Bucky called from the grill, coming over to get his beer from ground by Angie’s feet, and took a long sip. “Checked her out myself.”

Once the fire was in full swing, and the Frenchman had finally stopped swearing, Bucky came over with paper plates, some with hot dogs and some with hamburgers. They all got passed around, without any order to who kept what.

“Just hold onto what you want,” Bucky explained, at Betty’s bewildered expression. 

“Oh,” she said with a little laugh. “Thanks.”

“And you’re in my seat,” he added. 

Angie stood up mid-bite. “Take mine,” she said, and settled on his lap once he was sitting down. 

As they ate, the men swapped stories about their time in the war together, how they came to know Angie, who then added a few colorful stories of her own.

No one seemed to mention any of Steve’s businesses. Or, if they did, it was in references that were subtle enough to go over Peggy's head. 

Still, she knew this was all useful. She made note of every name, every inside joke, careful to not drink her first beer too quickly lest she forget everything by the time she went home. 

Right as Peggy had taken the last bite of her hotdog, Angie stood up. “I’m off to the powder room. Bet, you comin'?”

“Sure,” she said with a smile, standing and leaning over to set her beer down and pick up her purse, the fabric of the front of her dress hanging as she did, showing off a little too much to those across the circle from her.

“ _Je comprends pourquoi il est attiré par elle_ ,” the Frenchman - Dernier - said to the guy sitting next to him with a playful elbow.

“ _Ce n'est certainement pas parce qu'elle est une bonne secrétaire_ ,” the other replied with a straight face and a sip of his beer. Dernier laughed. Peggy bit back a smirk once she was past them, Angie a step in front of her.

“Hey, quit that,” Bucky called, and she heard the soft thud of one of the pillows landing on the artificial turf before they descended the stairs and were out of hearing range. 

“I’ve never seen Bucky so happy,” Peggy said to Angie as she led them down two flights, wanting a conversation to distract from how nosy she was about to be in Steve's flat. “He’s also said more words to me tonight than he has in the past four months combined.”

Angie laughed, the easy sort of laugher that usually would come from practice - that was the type Peggy was best at, disarming, charming, giving the impression she was utterly relaxed in anyone’s presence - but with Angie it was easy to tell she already considered Peggy a true friend. It was genuine. “He’s a teddy bear. Don’t let him get to you.”

The apartment was much more simple than Peggy would have anticipated from well-dressed, expensive-tastes Steve. It had a quiet elegance to it, and none of the modernistic, sharp edges she’d expected, filled with worn furniture that was there to be used instead of looked at, warm like his office. She was struck with the feeling of the intimacy in being there, seeing this place that he only revealed to those in his inner circle.

The part of her that wasn't distracted by that was glad to realize she had somehow already made it to the inner circle. Perhaps he hadn't grown bored of her after all.

“Are you two…?” Peggy trailed off, looking at a photo on a bookshelf of Steve as a child, with a brown haired boy next to him. Bucky, she assumed. They were in this exact room, sitting on the same couch Peggy was standing next to, though it appeared to have been re-upholstered recently.

“Who, me and Bucky?” Angie laughed again and shook her head. “We tried it once, before I realized the only men I wanted to sleep with were the ones that paid me.” She put her purse down on the couch and dug through it for a tampon. “What about you and Steve? The guys were all talking about you before you showed up.”

“Oh, I don’t—I mean, there’s nothing between us,” she said, and fiddled with the strap of her purse, making herself blush.

“You don’t like him?”

“I don’t think he’s interested in me like that.”

Angie pursed her lips and looked Peggy over before stepping behind a door, just off the hallway that led to the rest of the apartment. “Here’s the thing,” she called, unbothered by being in the bathroom while having this conversation, “and you didn’t hear it from me, but Bucky told him to back off at first. Thought you were being too aggressive.”

Peggy stayed where she was despite how curious she was to see the rest of the flat. There was a kitchen straight ahead, and two more doorways after the bathroom. At least one had to be his bedroom. She memorized the layout, closed her eyes to picture it in her head, cementing it in place. “I thought that was what Steve wanted,” she admitted. “I backed off as soon as he started pulling away. Do you think it was too much at first?”

“Nah, I think Steve likes aggressive girls. I think Bucky worries he was thinking too much with his dick. But he’s a good judge of character, Steve.” Angie paused. The toilet flushed, the sink ran. She opened the door and gave Peggy a secret smile. “Between you and me, I say you should make a move.”

“Tonight?” Peggy asked, looking startled at the idea. “I would have worn something nicer.”

“You look plenty nice!” Angie took a step closer and fluffed Peggy’s curls, pulled a bobby pin out of her own hair and stuck it in her mouth as she rolled a section of Peggy’s hair back, then pinned it in place. “There, go take a look at yourself. And freshen up that lipstick. We wanna draw his eyes to your lips. Tempt him even more.”

When they came back up to the roof it was dark out, all traces of the sun gone from the horizon, the glow from the fire illuminating Steve's friends, the flickering of the flames giving Steve a more menacing appearance as the shadows jumped on his face. The Manhattan skyline was visible and lit up in windows behind him, the top of the Empire State Building bathed in red light. 

Angie walked ahead and settled in Peggy’s seat with a grin. 

“What took you so long?” Bucky asked, handing Angie her plate. 

“Girl talk,” Angie said, not explaining further.

Peggy looked between Angie and Steve, both with amused expressions on their faces at how flustered she was without a place to sit. She held her head up higher, grabbed her beer resolutely, and strode over toward Steve’s chair. She gestured at the armrest. “Do you mind?"

His eyes shone a fiery orange, the few empty bottles he’d drunk clinking together by his feet as he shifted. “Not at all. Glad you came out tonight,” he said, putting a hand on her side as she sat, fingers settling in the crease between her hip and leg. It’d been ages since he’d touched her with any kind of intent behind it, and the heat that rose to her cheeks was all Peggy.

Damn it.

She finished her beer, and took another as the stories became more ridiculous, some she even recognized as ones she’d heard earlier that evening but with more dramatic details the second time around.

“I thought Steve won the strip poker game?” Peggy asked, letting her words slur just slightly. Two beers was enough to make Betty tipsy. 

Jones, the second French speaker of the group, started passing around the box of cookies she'd brought. “That’s only when he tells the story,” he said, grinning at her. It was simple, friendly, as if they'd known each other for years.

Under different circumstances, she found herself thinking, she might get along well enough to be friends with them.

Angie stretched and stood, checked her phone. “It’s about time for me to head out, fellas,” she said, and came over to give Peggy a hug. “It was so nice to meet you, Betty.”

“You too. Does Steve have your number?”

“I’ll give it to you,” he said, and rubbed her back. 

Angie beamed. “There you go.”

“Thought we got you off from work tonight, Ang?” Dugan asked, getting up to get another beer, which led to a chorus of voices demanding he get them all another. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered.

“Exactly. Why waste my night off here, when I could be in sweats in my own bed?” Angie grinned. “See you next week, Steve?” 

“I’ll contact your boss with the day and time," he replied smoothly.

Dugan came over and held out a beer to Peggy. “No, thank you. I don’t know about you all, but I’ve got work tomorrow,” she joked.

“I’ve got it on good authority your boss wouldn’t be upset,” Steve said, dragging his knuckles over her low back in a small circle. She had stayed where she was, even after a seat opened up. 

“I’m a lightweight,” she explained with a laugh. “I’ll embarrass myself. Or fall asleep!”

Dugan shrugged and held the beer out to Steve but he held up a hand to turn it down. “I’m alright. You gettin’ tired, Bet?”

“A little,” she admitted, turning to look at him. 

“Why don’t I walk you home?”

“I’d like that.” She slid to her feet and started to pick up her empty bottles, but Steve put a hand on her back. “Leave ‘em. I paid for the drinks, these idiots can clean ‘em up,” he said, his Brooklyn accent stronger after he’d been drinking. It was endearing. 

He put his hand between her shoulder blades once she had her purse in hand. A few of the guys whistled as they walked past. Steve flipped them off while she ducked her head and smiled.

“Sorry,” he said, grinning as they made it downstairs. “They’re all assholes.”

“They’re nice. I thought you said you were inviting employees tonight?”

“Most of them are on my payroll.” 

When they hit the street, Peggy shivered. Being close to the fire had kept her from the bite of the night air. He put his arm around her waist as they walked. “It’s good to employ friends. People you trust.” She looked at him, letting him guide her. “Are we friends?”

“Seems like a silly question, Bet.”

“You stopped talking to me. I thought you didn’t like me. But now you’re here. Walking me home.”

Steve rubbed a hand over her hip and stopped her on the corner as cars started to drive past again. “I wanted to let you settle into the job.”

“I’m settled,” Peggy said, slurring her words. 

He got her keys from her purse and opened the door to her building a few blocks down. He lead her up the stairs and to her door silently. He still had her keys in his hand.

“You have to unlock it,” Peggy teased. 

As soon as it was out of her mouth she was pressed against the wall, Steve standing close. 

“I know how the damn door works,” he breathed, head tilting so he was speaking right by her ear. His fingers tangled in the fabric of the dress at her waist. It was as if all of his resolve and all of his teasing had melted away after a few drinks. He must have been thinking about her as much as she'd been thinking of him. She shuddered. “I’ve missed you, Betty.”

“I’ve been in your office everyday,” Peggy replied, voice uneven. “We should,” she hesitated, switched to a whisper, “Fran likes to keep an eye out in the hallway.”

“Don’t like an audience?” 

“I, um. I haven’t ever…” She swallowed. 

Her keyring jingled as he lifted it and unlocked the door. “Inside. Now.”

Peggy went in, awaiting further instruction. His eyes trailed over her. It was like being back in front of the fire pit, but the heat was bubbling up inside of her. 

She bit her bottom lip. 

He strode over to her, pulled her waist against his and kissed her hard enough that their teeth banged together before he could correct course, open her up with his tongue and drag it over the roof of her mouth. 

A soft moan spilled past her open lips. 

“Couch,” he decided, and she nodded, letting him move her, push her down until she was on her back, under the weight of him and his heavy, dark gaze. Her chest was moving faster than it had any right to as she tried to catch her breath, and she put her hand on his neck to pull him down for another kiss.

“I want you,” Peggy murmured.

Steve moved his hips against hers, making it very clear that he was wanting. In no small way, either. Her pulse raced.

“Condoms?” 

She shook her head. “Don’t need.”

He grinned at her. He was all teeth and hunger, and his hands were on his belt while she was tugging up the skirt of her dress, about to push her panties off, when his phone rang.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Steve groaned, and sat back on his heels.

“Don't,” she whined, pushing herself up on elbows and looking at him desperately.

He looked absolutely wretched as he pulled his phone from his pocket. She was trapped with him sitting on her legs, her dress up, utterly indecent. The position itself was doing things to her, and then he pressed his thumb over her panties. She gasped.

She knew he could feel how wet she was. There was no faking that.

“Quiet.” He pressed his thumb to her lips and she took it into her mouth, tasting herself on him. She made sure to move her tongue on his fingertip in a way that that promised what was in store after he'd hung up. “What?” Steve answered, practically a growl. His face changed as he listened, first to surprise, then anger, then outrage. He pulled his hand away from her. “I’ll be right there,” he said, and tapped the screen to end the call.

He pushed a hand through his hair. “Something happened.”

“What is it?” Peggy asked, trying to sit up more. “Do you have to go?”

He gave her a charming smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He stood, buckled his belt. “I’ll give you a call.”

Peggy didn’t bother to cover herself with her skirt. He may as well see what he was missing as he left, even if he was already suffering enough with how tight his jeans seemed to be. It was a very good look on him. "When will that be?"

“As soon as I’m free.” He leaned over to kiss her cheek, but his lips landed lower, and he nipped at her jaw. His voice dropped in pitch. “Don’t touch yourself before you hear from me.” 

Peggy watched him in astonishment as he fixed his shirt, adjusted himself in his jeans, appeared to make himself sober by power of will. "You're not serious," she said. Who knew how long that would be? The frustration of waiting another hour seemed like it might kill her, even if she knew she should care more about the situation pulling Steve away than about the parts of Steve she was eye level with. It would be a fatal mistake to mistake Betty's attraction as her own. She knew this.

It was all bloody fine.

“Dead serious," Steve said, and left without another word. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French Translation:
> 
> Dernier: I understand why he's attracted to her  
> Jones: It's definitely not because she's a good secretary


	6. Chapter 6

Peggy stayed on her couch for over an hour while she waited to hear from him, debating whether it was worth it to get herself off in the mean time. She had peeled off her ruined knickers when they became too uncomfortable, and the naughty feeling of sitting there with her legs spread and the cool air hitting her damp skin only made the idea all the more tempting.

If he called, he'd want to hear every detail of what she was doing, of how it felt for her to be open like that, ready for him as if she was expecting him to walk back in. She'd tell him, too. She'd do what he told her, even if he made her stay up all night dragging it out for herself.

It was the first time she was thankful she wasn’t still using the Agency-issued mobile. No need for Thompson to overhear all that.

Peggy sent Steve a text when it had been a while with no word from him.

No response. She tried again and received the same radio silence.

It was as good a reason as any to actually do her job, so she scraped herself off the sofa and went to where she'd hidden a notebook under a floorboard. She filled pages with details on his associates, inside jokes, references she hadn’t understood from that night that all could have been nods to business dealings, and went to bed with her phone quiet.

Shield & Key was open when she arrived the next morning, Bucky at the front desk again and the back room unlocked. Opening the door sent a spark of excitement down her chest, but the office was empty.

So much for her plan to jump Steve the minute she saw him. Peggy had half a mind to go in the tiny staff bathroom and take care of herself there to spite him.

But she was, unfortunately, trying to be professional. And Bucky was there. “Have you seen Steve?” she asked him after setting down her purse and coat.

“He’s running errands. He’ll be back after lunch,” Bucky replied around a piece of metal he was holding between his lips. 

She left the door to the back office open, knowing any good faith between Bucky and herself would disappear if she tried to close it. Still, Steve not being there for once gave her an opportunity she hadn't had in the past. Bucky would hear if she got up to explore the office, but his back was to the doorway, and he wouldn’t notice her jotting down some of the numbers from her screen onto a notepad. She pulled one from her purse, started with a few sequences she believed corresponded to shipping containers.

Going down to the shipyard to confirm this herself would be too suspicious. She could get someone to do it for her if she could ready a package of intel for a courier to bring to her handler.

Her thoughts unwittingly drifted to Steve, what they would be doing now if he had been there that morning, what they were close to doing the night before. The gentleness of his thumb on her lip. The weight of it on her tongue. How heady it was to know it’d be replaced with something else. 

She pressed her thighs together and took a sip from her water bottle when her mouth felt dry.

It wouldn’t do to let herself give in to the physical feelings she was developing for Steve. And she was sure that’s what they were—purely physical. The fun of competing against him, seducing him, calculating what he expected from an agent versus what he expected from a secretary was the sort of thrill that Peggy had always found enticing, and combined with the package it came in, the tight-shirted, powerful, handsomer-than-he-had-any-right-to-be Steve Rogers, it was damn near irresistible. 

But at some point she would have the evidence she needed to burn the whole thing to the ground. Steve would be left to the Feds, and she would leave the debris that once was his organization to return to her old job. 

Her old job that she was missing less and less each day. 

Peggy went to a diner for lunch. She'd heard Steve’s friends discussing it at the barbecue and wanted to see whether they were really that enamored with the food or if it was somehow part of his organization. 

It didn't appear to be anything special. Ripped red vinyl stools and chairs, cheap linoleum floors and table tops. Peggy was one of only a few patrons. She sat between a window and the door to the kitchen, alternating between listening to the chefs’ conversation when the doors opened, and watching for Steve, assuming that he’d be coming up from the docks and would have to walk past to return to the store. 

He walked everywhere during the day, unless he was running late for something. It likely helped that most of his operation was within a fifteen block radius. She didn’t see him, or hear anything interesting, and went back to the office in an even more foul mood. The entire day was turning into a waste. All she had to show for it was a set of numbers that might not mean anything, a disappointing meal, and enough sexual frustration to last her a lifetime.

When she returned, Steve was sitting at his desk as if he’d never left.

He was hunched over, scribbling in a notebook. “You’re back!” she said with a big smile that was fake enough to strain to her cheeks. He was wearing the same outfit as the night before, his jaw shadowed by stubble. Even Betty would recognize that he was in the same clothes. “Did you get any sleep?”

Steve didn’t reply, didn’t look up as he started to flip through the notebook. She’d seen it before, a slim leather-bound thing that he’d reference, jot something in, and put back in a locked drawer. He did just that as she watched. Some kind of datebook, she guessed. 

“Not as much as I’d like,” he said finally, once it was locked away. “You seemed to sleep well." He looked her over. She felt herself blush. "You didn’t disobey the order I left you with, did you?”

Peggy shook her head. “I didn’t. I waited for you to call.”

Steve motioned for her to come closer and pulled her into his lap, rucking her skirt up so she could get her knees on either side of his legs. “I've decided that's a new rule,” he said, hands warm on her thighs. He also seemed to have decided that he could touch her as much as he wanted now, after she'd consented the night before. She didn't mind. “Consider it part of your job description.”

Despite what he was talking about, exhaustion and stress were the only emotions rolling off of him. She cupped his cheek. “What happened last night?”

He leaned into the touch. Steve let out a sigh. She wondered how long it had been since anyone was gentle with him. “Someone that I thought was an ally started questioning how loyal they wanted to be.”

“Did you help them decide?”

Steve huffed a laugh. “Something like that. Took a lot of moving parts. Sometimes, to get the result you want here,” he brushed his thumb over the top of her leg before sliding it lower to the outside of her shin, “you need to apply pressure here,” he brought his other hand to her shoulder to push her dress down and hook a finger around her bra strap, “and throw a few solutions at the problem here.”

She wished the chair was wider, that she could spread her legs more and be resting against him, get any kind of friction. But she had already decided to try for the supportive role, instead of the horny one. She was already regretting it.

“Angie isn’t in trouble, is she?” Peggy asked. It was an innocent enough question now that they were friends, but she could see the way he closed off as soon as she asked it. Fuck. 

“She and her friends are all safe.” He patted her ass lightly. “How about a coffee?”

She would have asked a better question if she known he’d only be answering the one. “I’d love one, thanks,” Peggy said with a teasing smile, no outward hint of her annoyance with herself. 

He chuckled and helped her off his lap, gripping her wrist loosely. “Funny. Just for that, I’m not gonna tell you how I like it.”

“What if I get it wrong?” 

“Guess I’ll have to figure out a fitting punishment.”

She returned with coffee prepared exactly how he liked it. She'd take him up on the promise of a punishment another day. Today she thought he might fall over without enough coffee. Steve took a sip and looked her over. “Perfect.”

“Does that mean I’ve avoided getting fired?” Peggy went over to sit at her desk.

“For now.”

They both worked, and she checked in on him every few minutes. As the caffeine took effect his appearance shifted away from tired until the stubble around his mouth spoke more toward brutality than a lack of grooming. It was a fitting look for him. It did nothing for how turned on she was.

While he was in the office with her she couldn’t continue to make notes from the spreadsheet, but the next few numbers she’d been planning on writing down were short enough to memorize. She went over them in her head while she worked, careful to not let what she was thinking impact what she typed.

She was pulling files from the filing cabinet when she noticed some missing. “Did you take these out for me already?” she asked, looking back at him.

“Just needed them to reference something. I’ll give them to you when I’m finished,” Steve said, watching her. 

She nodded, taking instead the next section to put in the log. He wasn’t doing as much work as he normally did. The coffee might not have been enough to keep him fully functioning.

She knew fatigue sometimes made people willing to talk, more open with information. It could also make them more volatile, less trusting.

Peggy was acutely aware that she’d gotten farther with infiltration than any other agent, and yet Steve still kept her in the dark about everything important. She was in his office every day. She might be in his pants sometime soon. Any mistake, any misstep might mean the end of mission and the Agency's chances at putting him away. But she might not get another chance like this. 

She shut the drawer with a click and set the files on her desk before spinning in her chair to face him. With her legs crossed, her red and white patterned dress showed off her toned calves. “Can I ask you a question?”

Steve hadn’t yet looked away from her, and gave her a calculated smile. “Ask away.”

She bit the inside of her cheek. “You have all these other businesses, right? But I don’t get what they are. Or what these numbers are. I mean,” she twisted, motioning to a column on her computer screen, “this one seems like profits. So that’s how I’ve been organizing it. But if you told me more I could probably make it even more streamlined for you.”

Steve leaned back in his seat. He took a sip of coffee, put his feet up, dragged his eyes over her legs. “You want to know more about what I do?”

“Yes.” Peggy fiddled with her hands, picked at her cuticles—a nervous tell of Betty’s. “If you don’t mind telling me.”

“And you want to know just so that you can organize the information for me?”

She nodded.

Steve drummed his fingers on the coffee cup. 

Peggy waited, her breathing steady.

“You remember when we first met?”

“I do,” she said, with a slow smile. “You told me you owned the neighborhood.” 

“I protect it. Keep the people here safe.” He set his coffee cup down and folded his hands on his lap. “The man I was dealing with last night, he’s the kind of guy that makes decisions that impact the community. His being disloyal means I get a little less control, and the people of this neighborhood get a little less protected.”

A politician, perhaps? As far as she knew, Steve mostly dealt locally, which ruled out U.S. senators and representatives, but there were still state senators, assembly members, city council, the mayor, and even the governor to deal with. Unless he’d recently started broadening his control.

"And your businesses?"

"Bring in money that help me protect people."

“So you left me hanging last night to protect your community? That’s very noble.”

Steve grinned wolfishly. “It wasn’t to protect your virtue, Bet. Wasn't sure if you had any of that left, anyway.”

She laughed and crossed her arms. “I take offense at that.”

“The point is, I run a few different businesses." His phone rang and he pulled his feet down from the desk. "We’ll get into details later.” 

She would have been upset about the call interrupting them if he hadn't gone on to conduct the entire conversation without leaving his chair. Getting less sleep definitely made him sloppy. That, or he trusted her more than she realized.

Either way, Peggy wouldn't mind seeing to it that he got less sleep in the future.

He had the volume low enough on his phone that she couldn’t hear the voice on the other end of the line, but his half of the exchange was enough. The call concerned the person he’d taken care of the night before, and something he was receiving. He ended the call by saying that he’d be taking a meeting himself that night.

She figured she could tail him, or show up at his apartment right before he left for it. She could also ask him out for dinner, bat her eyelashes; unless he planned on napping at his desk, he would still be running on no sleep and might be malleable enough that she could gently prod him into inviting her. 

Steve came over to her desk at quarter past five and saved her the trouble of deciding. “You free tonight? I want you to come with me to something.”

“I am.” Peggy smiled up at him. “Should I bring anything?”

He put his hand on her shoulder, leaned over her to save her work, shut her laptop. “A notepad, a pen. That should be it. You have a big lunch today? It might go on for a while.”

Steve helped her into her coat, hands smoothing down her arms once they were in the sleeves. He offered her his elbow, and she looped a hand through. Bucky was already gone when they locked up “Where is it?” she asked.

Steve hummed instead of answering. They started walking south, and although they didn't take the subway she recognized that it was the same way she’d gone to deliver the letter. “If anyone asks, you’re my secretary. Don’t answer any questions,” he said.

Peggy looked at him, her face wrinkled with a hint of concern. “Who’s going to be asking me questions?”

Steve didn’t answer that, either. The early evening was cool and comfortable, the heat of his body next to hers enough to keep her from regretting the spring coat she wore. He turned them unexpectedly when they were far down the avenue and she nearly lost her footing. Her grip tightened on his arm. 

“Sorry,” Peggy said with a little laugh. “I thought we were going to your mom’s house.”

“You keep thinking you know what’s happening, huh?” Steve joked, moving his hand to her back. 

She did, as a matter of fact, and began preparing for him to take her to a shady place under a bridge, an abandoned warehouse, the docks. Maybe even an office building.

He stopped them outside of a community center and opened the door for her. A few people followed them inside. As far as she could tell, none of them were armed or dangerous in any way. A banner at a table in the lobby of the building announced the gathering as a Community Board meeting. 

Through a set of double doors to a larger room there were more people milling about.

Steve signed them both in with only their first names, and a phone number that was different from the one he’d put in Betty’s phone. She memorized it, deciding it was more important than the last few things she'd tried to remember off the spreadsheet.

Inside there were rows of chairs, and two tables pushed together to face the audience behind a podium. Some sharply dressed individuals congregated to the side of the room, all chatting amiably with each other.

“Representatives of local politicians,” Steve murmured, following her gaze. He guided her to a spot toward the back “Board members are all up front.” He named a few of them for her as the chairs started to fill.

“Do you always go to these meetings?” Peggy asked. He put his arm up around the back of her chair. 

“I usually send one of my guys. But I’ve got a personal stake in this tonight.”

The meeting was called to order. There were updates from the political offices, announcements from the board about elections, questions from the members of the community, and more than half of the people in the room had testimonials on why they thought a bike lane would either save or doom their section of Brooklyn. It was dull enough that Peggy almost nodded off.

Steve seemed riveted, though, despite the bags that were darkening under his eyes by the minute. Every now and then he would tap the pad of paper in her lap and she’d write down the last thing someone had said. 

Peggy tried to focus on why he was here, what he found so important about it. There was value that Steve saw in knowing what his community was most concerned about, and being involved likely gave him some power; having someone looking after your supposed best interests, someone who could sort this all out for you, must be a relief to members of the community, she realized, especially if they felt the board wasn’t doing a quick enough job.

Steve wasn't bound by any of the bureaucracy they were.

After two hours that Peggy was sure had lasted approximately a decade, a board member brought up the last item on the docket, a property dispute. Steve sat up straighter. “The city had to seize it from the owner,” he murmured to Peggy. She sat up as well, following his lead. “Caught them selling illegal imports through the club.”

Peggy remembered this from his file: Club Commando. The owner had been arrested. He wouldn’t say a thing about who he was working for, but everyone knew. Steve had frequented the club nearly every night. There was no record tying him to it other than the good relationship he had with the bartenders, who all agreed that Steve's tips were the most generous, Steve's friends the most respectful of them.

“You didn’t know about it?” she whispered back. Their faces were close. She remembered how close they’d been the night before, and shoved that thought away. “You know everything that goes on here.”

He raised his eyebrows at her and turned his attention to the board as they took a vote on whose petition of ownership they’d support in their letter to their city councilman. It was a unanimous vote for someone named Grant, though one of the members - the treasurer - gave her affirmative vote hesitantly.

Peggy knew his middle name, but Betty wouldn't. She'd have to keep playing dumb about it. “Why did that one not want to vote for Grant?” Peggy asked, nodding toward the woman on the end who was pale, her mouth set tight. 

He didn't answer until after the meeting ended, after they'd filled their coat pockets with the many handouts they’d received, and the sound of the chairs shuffling and folks catching up with one another was enough to cover his voice. “Her husband went to prison. He was the last owner.” 

Peggy glanced at the woman, glad to have gotten a copy of one of the Community Board’s agendas with all of the members' names. The treasurer would be a good person to talk to. Her husband hadn’t flipped on Steve, but she might. 

“So she doesn’t want someone else to have it?”

“Sort of,” Steve said, pulling his phone out to send a quick text. Peggy tried to see what he was typing from where she was, but he had a screen protector that prevented reading the screen from an angle. “She thinks the city council vote won’t be fair, regardless of what their vote here was.”

“Will it be fair?” Peggy asked.

He smirked. “Not after last night."

Peggy smiled. She’d have to do some research on the councilman in the area to figure out who it was he'd paid a visit to the night before. 

Peggy assumed they were done with the meeting, but people began to come over to shake Steve's hand, say hello. A few brought up concerns, as if he was a board of his own. He nudged her and she started writing down the complaints he was informed about. 

A few of the political representatives came by as well, with regards from their respective elected officials. Peggy took note of those, too, if only so she could copy it down when she got home. Knowing which politician wasn’t under his thumb might be the most useful, as they would likely know about Steve's activities and be less nervous to speak.

The stream of people tapered off. Steve pulled his coat on. Peggy took one last look at the treasurer. The woman was watching them leave, the same expression on her face as during the vote.

The sky outside was clear. For the city, that meant only the brightest handful of stars were visible. They walked from one pool of streetlight to another.

“Everyone seemed to know you in there,” Peggy said after a few blocks of silence between them.

“They do. A lot of them have worked with me before.”

“Really?”

“In some capacity or another.” Steve shrugged and led her to the subway. She followed him down to the platform. She wasn’t sure if they were taking a train back because he thought she might be cold, or because he was tired. He might have had somewhere far to go. “Most people in the area have.”

“Like that woman's husband?”

“He wasn’t careful. That wasn’t on me.” The platform was empty around them, save for a rat scurrying along the track, but Steve stood close to her anyway. His voice was low. She knew he’d angled himself so that his mouth wouldn’t be visible by any of the cameras. “He’s lucky it was the Feds that got him and not one of my guys.”

His eyes flashed dark as she looked up at him. It was one of the first explicit threats she’d heard him make. 

“So you did know about it." Peggy put her hands in her coat pockets. "What if he had mentioned you?”

“He wouldn’t have.”

“Why not?” 

Steve twirled a piece of her hair with his finger. “Everyone knows what happens when you talk. I inspire a certain kind of loyalty.”

“You sound like that quote.” Betty was proud to have something to contribute. “It’s better to be feared than loved, right? He must be afraid of you.”

“Best to be both,” Steve reminded her. “I have a system that works for me. Loved by those around me, feared by those against me.”

Peggy leaned closer, up against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her to hold her there. “Is that what you do with all your businesses? Make people in your neighborhood love you, and everyone else fear you?”

He pulled her with him as he stepped backward, leaned against one of the yellow-painted metal pillars. “I help the people in my neighborhood however I can.”

“Like how?” Peggy asked. Steve tilted his head down. He pressed a kiss to her neck. She took a soft breath in.

“I make sure they know where to find me. Try to be consistent.” He kissed just below her ear.

“Isn’t that dangerous? People who are mad at you will, um.” Peggy swallowed. “They could find you easily, too.”

“I’m untouchable,” Steve said with a breath of a laugh against her neck. “Besides, people like Fran won’t have the ability to hunt me down if there’s an issue. Can’t disappoint them like other leaders have.” He bit her ear. She made a soft sound of protest. 

“Steve, we’re in _public._ ”

“That really bothers you, doesn't it?”

God, no. It had the exact opposite effect. “A little.” She bit her lip.

The light of the incoming train bounced on the tile of the tunnel, glowing down the track. Steve pulled away, took her hand and led them toward the edge of the platform. He stepped to the side to put a few feet of distance between them, their arms stretched out, hands still linked, and gave her fingers a squeeze. “How’s this? Chaste enough?”

“Too chaste,” Peggy said with an easy, genuine laugh. She tugged him closer, settled against his side. He put his arm around her and slid his hand into her coat pocket, curling around her hip.

“I’m just following your lead, Bet.”

“You’re an asshole, Steve.” 

He grinned at her. She grinned back. 

On the train, he took the seat next to hers, the side of their legs pressed together. There were a few other people toward the other end of the car, but Steve didn’t seem to mind them as he rested his hand on her leg, pinching the soft cotton of her dress to roll it between his thumb and forefinger, pulling the hem up higher on her leg as he did. 

She rested her head on his shoulder. The meeting had tired her out, and she knew Steve must be half asleep already. He pressed a kiss to her hair, but she hardly noticed, busy fixating on his fingers.

When she stood at the stop before her own, he stayed seated. “Coming?” she asked, already predicting where this was going. 

He shook his head. Damn him. “I’m headed somewhere else.”

“Your place? I don't mind going there instead.”

Steve chuckled, gestured for her to lean over with the curl of a few fingers, and rewarded her with an absolutely filthy kiss that would have made her lose balance even without the jerky stop of the train. She fell forward against him and he helped her back up with a round laugh.

“Go home, Betty. I’ll give you a call if I have the time. And that rule we talked about today still applies.”

“I might not listen this time,” she warned him.

“Yeah, you will,” Steve said. The playfulness of his voice was dissonant to the dark possessiveness in his eyes. Even running on no sleep, he managed to look terrifying, and terrifyingly good.

"Yeah," she agreed, stepping out onto the platform and turning back to meet his gaze. "I will."

Neither looked away as the doors closed. She stayed where she was until all that was left of the train was an echo down the tracks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the longer than normal wait!
> 
> if any of you live in NYC and haven't been to your Community Board meeting, they're super interesting, and a cool way to learn about what's going on in your community and in the offices of all the elected representatives in the many districts you're in (school, state assembly/senate, city council, etc). 
> 
> CBs don't really have any power, they're more an advisory board than anything else, but it's like, a realllllly bad look for councilmen to disagree with the recommendations of the board, at least from what I've gathered from the few I've gone to. It's also a good way for communities to come to a consensus about what they need from their local reps and to hold them accountable.


	7. Chapter 7

“What am I looking at?” Peggy asked. The club was clearly old and starting to fall apart, the walls paneled, the grime on the windows preventing more than a few streaks of light from getting in, the floors somehow still sticky, despite the place being closed for nearly a year.

The stench of mildew and stale alcohol was heavy in the air. Peggy had once spent a week in the French sewers and had been surrounded by worse. Betty was less equipped to handle the situation. She wrinkled her nose.

Dugan laughed, leaning over the dusty bar to grab a bottle of something. “She’s funny,” he said, and lifted a bottle. He wiped the dirt off with his shirt so he could read the label.

Steve put his hands on the back of the chair he’d sat Peggy down in after guiding her inside. “Club Commando, the place I told you about? There are some private rooms, a nice big area we could put in for some dining. I think it has a good shot at becoming something better.” He tilted her chair back. She yelped in surprise, the sound morphing into a laugh. 

“I think it has a bad smell and probably rats,” she said, reaching back to hold onto Steve’s arm when her feet left the floor. “I don’t get what’s so great about this place.”

He leaned over, pressed his lips to her temple. “It’s what’s beneath the surface that makes it so exciting,” he whispered, his breath tickling her ear.

She shivered. “Mold?” 

Steve laughed. “Potential.” He set her chair down and instead settled his hands on her shoulders. 

Dugan - Tim, as Betty had taken to calling him, though he went by Dum Dum to some of his friends - sat on one of the barstools as a few of the other members of Steve’s most trusted crew came in from the back room, carrying a couch between them and headed toward the door. “We had a lot of good times here,” he said. “Lots of secrets hidden under this place.”

“It still doesn’t look like much from where I’m sitting.” Peggy craned her neck back to look up at Steve, imagining the sort of dark dealings that had happened here, all of the ones they had planned. She wondered how much DNA evidence from various crimes she’d be helping to clean away over the next few months of getting the club back into shape. 

His fingers slipped into the neckline of her dress, pulling her out of that train of thought. Her smile grew teasing. “Being handsy isn’t going to make me any more impressed. Will I be working here once it’s opened?”

“I’m not gonna make you bartend, but the finances will get added to your responsibilities.” His hands moved lower, pads of his fingertips sliding over the lace lining at the top of her bra. She took in a breath, lips parted.

“Get a room, you two,” Bucky called, following in after the guys and directing them through the narrow door. He wasn’t wearing his prosthetic today, his sleeve knotted up by his shoulder, and his hair up in a messy bun. “We came here to clean up, not catch a show.”

“I’m not doing anything,” Steve said, pulling his hands away only after planting a warm kiss to her neck. “You know how to sweep?”

Peggy grinned. “I’ve heard of the concept, Sir. Is that what you want me to do?” 

Steve offered her a hand and helped her up. “Not all that I want you to do.”

Bucky groaned. 

“Give ‘em a break,” Dugan argued, and Bucky huffed, leaning against the doorway, “I’d be as forgiving as you are if you had shared that bottle.”

Peggy smiled as Steve pulled her closer, and made herself blush again. “We’ll finish this later.”

“You’re going to be the death of me, Steve,” she said, looking up at him. He’d said to dress casually, so she was wearing jeans, a fitted t-shirt, and flats, and was thoroughly enjoying the few extra inches it put between them. She was sure Steve was, too. “You keep saying ‘later,’ and a girl’s gonna think you’re having her on.”

“Good things are worth waiting for.” He gave her a chaste kiss. “Go sweep out the back room?”

The back room was exactly what she would have expected from a seedy club. It featured cubicle-like spaces that would likely be curtained off, each large enough to fit a loveseat, as well as a few different safes, and doors that were doing a terrible job of pretending they were sections of the wall. She had her hand on the carved out handle when she heard something shuffle.

Peggy spun around, grip tight on her broom. Falsworth stepped out from behind a tall cabinet with a smile. “My apologies, Betty. I didn’t know you were back here.”

“Steve brought me here to show me the place. And get me to help” She smiled back pleasantly, and held up the broom. “Was it always this gross? I don’t see what you guys see in it, but don’t tell him I said that.”

Falsworth let out a dry laugh while his eyes were trained on her. “It’s seen better days. The last owner didn’t take as good care of it as Steve would have hoped.”

“So he’s the owner now? I thought Grant somebody or other got the petition.” 

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“My mom always told me I’ve got a curious personality.”

“And where’s your mother now?” 

Peggy swallowed. She thought she’d been inducted into the inner circle and was done with this sort of interrogation. “She passed away. My dad, too.”

“How long ago?” 

“A few years.” She shrugged, and folded in on herself under his look. “I should… I’ll go see if Steve wants me to do anything else.”

“You do that, love.”

Steve was gone when she came back out. “Where’d he go?” Peggy asked.

“Just missed him,” Gabe said with an apologetic smile. 

Steve’s jacket was still over her purse on the barstool where he’d put it. There must be some other secret room, one that might still have something important in it. Peggy wasn’t going to push—especially with Falsworth already suspicious of her. “I’ll head back to the office, I guess?”

“You could take the rest of the day off,” Bucky said. She noticed Dugan and Gabe catch each others’ eye in her peripherals. 

“Are you sure? Steve might want me to fix up the files, get the club added to the revenue streams.”

“Go home, Betty.” Bucky’s voice was stricter.

She texted Steve on the way out that she’d be at her apartment and that he could stop by later. 

He didn’t. 

She wasn’t expecting him to. Hoping, maybe. 

He’d been busy enough since the Community Board meeting that she didn’t see him often, but being allowed to see the club was progress. He wanted her to know more about how things worked. She wanted to learn. 

The night after they’d finished with the deep clean of the club - they’d had Betty walk barefoot to see if she approved of the newly stick-free and shined floors - she was startled awake from a knock on her door. She hadn’t had the urge to reach for a gun in a while, but her hand went to her bedside table before she remembered that there was nothing there but hand lotion, her nightly face cream, and a box of tissues.

Peggy was alert. Betty needed to be asleep. She made herself look groggy as she cracked open the door. Steve held up a cup of coffee. “Good morning. I want you to come with me on a job.”

She took the coffee with a frown, still squinting as her eyes grew used to the light. “At three a.m.?”

“Well, the meeting’s at four, but I thought we’d give ourselves enough time to get there.” He shut the door and put a hand on her back to guide her to the bedroom. She had a sip of the coffee. 

Having him there - even without any personal touches of her own - felt intimate, calculated. Or was he simply curious what her bedroom looked like? It wasn't exciting; she had a sepia toned, framed photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge over her bed, and sunflowers printed on her quilt. A poster from a bar in her supposed hometown. A picture of her ‘parents’ next to her bed.

“Do we have enough time to enjoy each other’s company before we go?”

“We’ve got a pretty strict schedule.” He sat on her bed and smoothed a hand over the rumpled sheets. She waited. He looked at her.

“I have to get dressed.”

“I know.”

She set her coffee down on the dresser and came closer, flushed but determined. “Then why don’t you help me out of these clothes?”

Steve sighed, and it was the most regretful sound Peggy had ever heard. “If I get my hands on you, we’re not gonna make that meeting.”

Well, if that’s how he felt, then she wasn’t about to give him a strip tease when she really did want to find out what the meeting was about.

But god, if she didn’t want to give him one. Later. 

She took her time picking out a pair of panties so that he could stew on the fact that she slept without, picked up leggings, a sweater, a bra, and locked herself in the bathroom. Peggy came out only when she was made up with her hair up in a ponytail. It was far too early to care about curling it.

“You look cute,” he said, still waiting on her bed. She’d been expecting to find him snooping. “Is that your natural hair, or did you straighten it?”

She made a face. “It’s normally these annoying waves,” she said, looking in the mirror. Peggy liked her hair in this much more, but of course Betty liked the look of the fake curls, and the Agency liked the way they framed her face differently and added to the disguise.

“It’s nice.” Steve checked his watch. “We should go.”

“How far is it?” she asked, grabbing her coffee and her purse.

“Not far.”

Only a twenty minute walk, actually. He put his arm around her shoulders as she shivered in the predawn air. It still permeated through her coat and the holes of her sweater, but the heat of his arm helped. They crossed blocks until they made it to the water. A low, thin fog rolled up the river. She knew it’d be gone by the time the sun was up. 

The docks were abandoned, dark. She stayed close, and Steve must have picked up on some of the nerves she was trying to portray; he squeezed her hand and gave her a little smile. 

Peggy was nothing but curious. The sound of a ship’s horn sounded on the river. “Is the meeting here?” she asked, in all of Betty’s American innocence. 

A small boat docked. It looked like the weight of a single shipping container might sink it. “We,” Steve said, turning to look at her with a glint in his eye, “are going for a quick ride.”

She showed a tentative smile. “I don’t really like boats.”

“Yeah, you do. Come on.” He walked her toward the water’s edge and waved at one of the guys as he walked her onto the dock. “Watch your step. It’s slippery in the morning.”

The tugboat was tiny, and it seemed that any information for her would be in the bridge. There was no way she’d get in alone, but a guided tour could still prove useful. “Who’s in control of the boat?” she asked, glancing around. 

Steve pointed to the tinted window that led into the wheelhouse. “Through there,” he said, but his arm tightened around her. “Don’t worry, Bet. I’m not gonna let you fall into the River. These guys know what they’re doing.”

“You better not,” Peggy said, pulling her coat tighter around her.

The tugboat brought them around Brooklyn until they were pointed out at open waters, dark, rough before them. She imagined the ship heading straight toward the fog, the rolling waves that bounced their boat, the strength of the ocean as it threatened to swallow them. Maybe they would make it far enough that the city was out of sight and Steve would delight in the terror of it as she did. Maybe they would make it far enough that the city was out of sight and Steve would put a bullet in her head and drop her off the side of the boat.

They turned away from New York just past Staten Island. The horizon was starting to become the tired blue of the early morning by the time they docked in Jersey, and by her estimate nearly an hour had gone by.

If they were bringing the goods in from out of state that would explain why the Agency was never able to catch a shipment of his in New York Harbor. It was another thing to add to her intel package, which was only getting longer and longer by the day.

Steve had his arm around her waist and guided her up a gangway and onto a barge.

“She was just brought in. Right on time,” one of the men from the boat said as he followed behind them. Peggy felt eyes on her and she turned around, catching his eyes on her ass.

“A few hours late,” Steve said, shaking his head next to Peggy. “I like to be done before sunrise. We gotta be quick.”

The barge smelled of rust and seaweed. There were shipping containers stacked four tall in long imposing rows. The lights from the ship and the pier didn’t pierce the shadows. 

“Not my fault. The _VMS_ was running behind schedule.” The guy’s tone was less careful than it should have been, in Peggy’s opinion. It was never a good idea to piss Steve off, even if the man was acting as their guide. 

“VMS?” Peggy asked, looking over at Steve.

“The cargo ship all this was transferred from,” he said, patting one of the containers as they walked by. 

If Steve was as cocky as she thought he was, the letters might just correspond to a simple six number cipher on the spreadsheet, two digits for each letter’s place in the alphabet. 

The man stopped them at a container and pulled one of the doors open. The inside was stacked high with boxes of various sizes. Steve held out his hand to the man. “Flashlight.” The man handed it over. Steve handed it to Peggy. 

She dutifully shone it on the box he directed as he used his pocket knife to get it open, ripping the tape in a smooth pull, a practiced move. He pulled out an unmistakable package of cocaine.

“It’s all there,” the tugboat man said, and Steve tossed him the package, “Test it, Hodge.”

Hodge ripped it open, dipped a finger in, hummed. “Oh, it’s good. Pure. Better than the last shit you had.”

Steve nodded, pulling a piece of paper from his pocket. “We’ll go through these and be out of your hair. The trucks come in at ten. Get your men to load them up.” He started working down the sheet, cross referencing the pallets, the numbers of boxes. She wondered if it was all cocaine, or if some of the larger boxes had something else. 

With a creeping grin, Hodge sidled closer to Peggy. “You’re Steve’s new arm candy?” 

Christ. Focusing on the force it would take to knock him out with one punch helped her restrain herself from actually maiming him.

“I’m Steve’s,” Peggy replied.

“You even think of touching her and you’ll be choking on your own dick,” Steve growled, glancing up. The flashlight reflected off the metal floor of the container, casting a large shadow of Steve, a white flash in his dark eyes.

Hodge held his hands up and took a few steps back. “Just complimenting you on the girl. Does she have a name?”

“Not one I’m about to tell you,” she said, as Steve said, “That’s none of your business.”

Dealing with the idiot Hodge was worth it to see the pleased look Steve gave her at her response. “Which other containers are mine?”

“The two on either side, and that’s it. You got a small shipment today.”

Steve stood up from inspecting a box. “That’s it? What happened? And don’t you fucking tell me it’s because the _VMS_ left late.”

Hodge shrugged. “Mexican supplier chickened out of the expansion deal? You gotta get in touch with your guys on that end.”

Steve swore and kicked the wall. His foot bounced back with a dull clang of impact. The Agency was likely behind his frustration—shutting down his suppliers was one of their best ways of cornering him.

“I’ll look into other suppliers for you?”

“Yeah,” Steve said, breathing out in a huff, “see that you do. I’ll lock this up when I’m finished.” When Hodge was still hovering, he raised his eyebrows. “What the fuck are you still doing here?”

“I don’t get a tip?”

“Don’t chat up my girlfriend if you want a tip,” he said, shooing him away.

Hodge left, grumbling under his breath.

The idiot might have brought out the anger in Steve, or maybe Steve swore more when he was tired. Peggy was enjoying it, either way. “He’s fun,” she said mildly.

“He gets the job done. Hired him as a favor to his brother.” Steve came closer and handed her the manifest he’d been working off of. It was typed, which meant that somewhere there was a record of the transaction. Some of the numbers seemed familiar, too, and she recognized them as things she’d been inputting.

“How do you know his brother?”

“Served with him in the army.” Steve adjusted the flashlight for her. “See these numbers? We make sure it’s all here, make sure no one’s taking off the top, or that we paid for something we’re not getting.”

They made it through two of the containers, and she pocketed the manifests as they moved on. “Do you always do this personally?”

“Me or one of the guys.”

“And what was the Mexico supplier for? Is that where you got the cocaine?”

Steve chuckled. “How’d you know it was cocaine?”

“I’ve watched a lot of TV,” Peggy said with a sheepish laugh. “It looked just like it does in all those shows.”

Steve pulled the doors open and motioned for her to join her in the container, showing her where to hold the flashlight. “Mexico sells medications for cheap. Same ones we use here, but at a fraction of the cost. I had a shipment scheduled to bring some in for a few folks who can’t get what they need.” He shook his head, expression tightening. “The goddamn feds. They’ve been trying to get my ass for years.”

“You were importing medications?”

“You surprised?”

A pang of something she didn’t want to identify - guilt? Concern? - went through her as she pictured Fran going without some sort of life saving medication because of Peggy’s intervention. She could understand Steve’s frustration. “I guess I thought you just dealt with the nefarious stuff.”

“The nefarious stuff pays for the other stuff.”

The sky was growing bluer, the fog dissipating. She could read the manifest without the flashlight easily from the lights on the barge. He was moving one of the boxes as Peggy heard a few voices.

“Steve,” she hissed, and he looked up, “are all the guys here yours?”

“Someone coming?” he asked. She didn’t give herself time to revel in the way he understood her. She nodded.

Steve pulled the right door shut, the left open a crack so they could make it out. He turned the flashlight off and pressed a finger over his lips.

The footsteps grew louder. The voices were right outside. A man laughed, another replied in Mandarin with a dirty joke. 

Steve pressed closer to her.

The air between them grew hot. A crease of light fell on Steve’s face from outside the container, and the world outside fell back to its normal silence. “Are they gone?” 

“Not sure,” he murmured, voice low against her lips. He moved her backward, pressing her back against the cool metal, her feet stopped by a box, pushing her off balance. She wrapped her arms around him to keep from sliding down onto a box, and he kissed her.

His leg hitched up, pressed between her thighs. Her leggings did nothing to keep the heat of him away from her, and she sank onto his leg with a moan.

“Quiet.”

“Bossy,” Peggy teased back, and was rewarded with a hand sliding up under her sweater, to her side. “Are you...” his thumb tugged down the cup of her bra, circled her nipple, “ _Steve_ —really going to, to take me here?”

Steve bit at her neck hard, with intention to leave a visible mark. She took in an audible gasp. “No,” he said, and at the frustrated sound she made, he laughed into her, sucked the skin into his mouth.

“Why not?”

“I like making you wait.”

“I don’t believe that.” He didn’t react. She shifted, thinking that maybe there was something else. “Steve?”

He lifted his head and caught her gaze. “Everything okay?”

Peggy’s eyes were starting to focus again in the dim light. She could see the relief of his face, every rise and fall of his expression that was pulled together with a guilt she’d never seen on there before. 

“I want to know the real reason you keep putting it off. Because I know you; you take what you want, and you clearly want me.” Her voice got softer than she meant for it, caring where she’d meant to inject only desire, curiosity.

He watched her as if she were a puzzle piece that he couldn’t get to fit. “Bucky said something,” he admitted after an eternity of silence. 

“About me?”

“That I should make sure you want it.”

“I do,” Peggy said. Her chest moved with a soft sigh. “I thought I made that obvious?”

“You want to have sex with me. But do you want _me_?” 

“I...”

Whether it was a lack of sleep, the intensity on Steve’s face, or the fact that she was still worrying over being part of the reason crucial supplies weren’t going to his community, she couldn’t tell, but whatever the reason, she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him. She couldn’t even come up with any bloody answer to give. 

Peggy couldn’t remember a time in her career when she’d been unintentionally speechless.

Steve stood up straighter, helped her get her feet under her. “I care for you, Betty. I’m not looking for a mindless fuck. If that’s what you want, fine, but you’re going elsewhere to get it.”

She should, by all accounts, have been proud of herself. She infiltrated the organization. She made him fall for her. Fucking him might be a better distraction in the short term, but emotions were even more valuable when it came to manipulation. 

Guilt pitted in her stomach like lead. “I’m sorry, Steve. I’m… I know that I’m falling for you. I’m just not there. Not yet.”

He nodded at her, and turned away. 

They left the container, the sun just breaking over the side of the barge, and walked until they found a cab. It was a long drive back to the city, the stop and go of rush hour traffic making it feel unbearable. 

She was lost in thought when he put his arm up on the back of the seat and looked at her. She took the invitation, sliding across the backseat to lean into the comfort of his chest. 

Peggy had never intentionally let her guard down in front of him, or any mark, before. Even when they were minutes from sleeping together after that barbecue she’d been present through the haze of sex, so it took her by surprise to find out she'd fallen asleep only when she was woken by a kiss on the side of her head. 

He walked her into her building, her apartment, her bedroom, and hovered in the door. “Take today to rest. Don’t worry about work until tomorrow.”

When he was gone, she pulled the shipping manifests from her pocket, copied everything into her journal before she lit the papers on fire and washed the ashes down the sink drain.

It was only as she was curled up on the couch and replaying their conversation from the barge in her head - and thinking about Steve, with his possessive streak a mile wide, the way he’d take ribbing from his friends without taking cheap shots back at them, the prostitutes he’d hire for a night only to ask them a few questions and give them a few hours off, his genuine laugh in the face of a Fran story he’d heard hundreds of times, the way he’d been the angriest she’d ever seen him over losing medication for his community - that she realized she'd meant what she'd told him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emotional horniness? In Peggy's heart? It's more likely than you'd think.
> 
> (or, the chapter in which I overuse all kinds of dashes)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for sexual assault in this chapter. To skip it, stop reading after Peggy inspects the guns, and start again at the line "Steve rolled down the passenger side window" which will you take you past all of it. But the situation/Peggy's reaction to it is mentioned throughout the chapter, so if you want to skip the whole thing to avoid it all, I'll put a chapter summary at the end!
> 
> Also, if anyone's interested in the timeline, the fic started around early December and now it's the beginning of June

Working at ungodly hours of the morning became the new normal. Peggy started waking before the sunrise even on the days she wasn’t expecting a visitor. Steve had given her the schedule of the next few shipments, which came in every few days, not following any pattern that Peggy could discern, and had accompanied her to the docks in Jersey each time. 

Every morning he would show up with coffee and tell her what he was expecting to receive, go over the manifest with her, point out the men on his payroll and the ones that were there to return a favor. They’d check the inventory. They’d engage in some close encounters and heavy breathing against each other, or against a shipping container, or in the backseat of the car as they rode back to the city. 

As soon as Steve started to get busier with the club, Bucky showed up for her, without coffee and in a considerably worse mood than Steve usually was. Then, after a week, it was Gabe. She got on with him well enough, and he would entertain her by teaching her phrases in some of the languages he knew.

(She always botched the pronunciation at first, but it was helpful that he was at least as fluent as he thought he was—being taught a language she already knew by someone worse than her would have been painful.)

The first morning that no one was at her door when she knew there was a scheduled shipment, she texted Steve. _No escort?_

She could hear the challenge in his voice from his quick reply, and allowed herself to feel flattered that he had been waiting for her: _You’ll be fine. I trust you._

_I’ll miss you._

_You’ll see me soon._

There were a handful of dock workers in rotation for Steve that she had met, and that morning Hodge, Nadir, and Leeds were the ones at the pier to bring her across the bay and into New Jersey. She’d added their names to the journal she was keeping so that she could hand them over to the Agency—they could be a way in. Hodge, especially, who seemed only interested in his relation with Steve for the pay, the power it allowed him. He could get all that and more from her bosses. 

Now that she was on her own, that was something she could exploit. She took Hodge’s offered hand to step into the tugboat. He raked his eyes over her body, clad in a pink blouse, leggings, and a spring coat, nothing scandalous by any means, and she gave him a small smile. 

She didn't imagine overt flirting would get her anywhere other than next to Hodge on Steve's hit list, but she might be able to do it subtly enough that none of the other men noticed. 

Peggy took up a spot next to him at the bow and looked ahead into the murky water. “It’s a nicer morning today,” she said politely. 

“It’s always a good morning when you’re here, blondie,” he said, his hand slotting around to her waist. “No chaperone today?”

And here she thought she’d have to actually make an effort. Apparently it wasn’t good to underestimate how disgusting this man was.

“They thought I could handle myself,” she said, stepping away from him and sitting on a box. 

Before he could respond or follow her, Leeds called his name and dragged him over to help with something in the bridge. At least she knew now that he was definitely interested.

The air was warm, even with the river water misting in the air as the boat curved through the Narrows. Sunrise was creeping earlier and earlier, and she knew that meant Steve would want her to be faster, do her job quick and get out before it was light enough to be fully recognizable.

They passed Staten Island, over the state line, and Hodge was predictably handsy when he helped her onto the dock. “How many today?” she asked, pulling out the pen she’d brought with her. 

“Just two.”

She worked through the first shipment in silence. Without turning, she could tell his eyes were on her as she leaned over to check boxes. She took to crouching instead. Today was all weapons, something she hadn't seen come through Steve’s organization before. Logically, she knew most of the guys carried guns, but she’d assumed they kept to one or two apiece, not the stacks of serial number-less, various sized guns that she was looking over. 

He led her toward the far end of the barge when she was finished. "The second's this way."

"They're usually next to each other, aren't they?"

"Yeah, and today they're not."

A warning pricked at the back of her neck. 

A threat might help, if he was planning anything. "Why is the shipment separated? Steve will be pissed."

"Here." Hodge pulled open one door to a container, ignoring her. They were far from the light, and she couldn't see well inside. She stepped closer, peering in and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the light while she reached for her flashlight. Hodge shoved her in with heavy hands on her shoulders, pressed her back into the corner between the wall and the closed door, turned her so she was facing him.

Time slowed. 

She considered her options. 

Betty wouldn't be able to fight someone like Hodge—taller, stronger, muscled from years of manual labor. The situation alone probably would have her frozen in fear. 

The mission wasn't worth letting him go through with this, but she couldn't completely compromise herself. 

"Stop," Peggy said, feeling his grubby fingers pushing up her shirt. She made a face as he gripped her breast. She gave him a shove with an approximation of how strong Betty should be. “Hodge, stop it. Steve—”

"Steve can't protect you here," he muttered. His breath smelled like sour coffee and cigars. 

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, moved as if she was trying to fight him, until she had an angle that was good enough to get her knee jammed into his groin.

His pained noise was pathetic. He pulled back to instinctively fold in on himself, protect himself from more attacks, and on the way down Peggy punched him in the solar plexus, wanting to wind him enough that he couldn't follow her. 

She left at a run, tracing their path back toward the entrance to the barge. Thank god for her good sense of direction. Thank god for her bony knees and the self defense class she could pretend Betty had taken. 

She pulled off her coat and put it over her arm, the early morning coastal chill gone. The sun had already broken over the horizon and painted the docks, the water mocking her in its gentle glimmering waves.

Peggy knew that calling the cops was out of the question; Steve would hate the interference. And it would bring up too many questions that would put her cover at risk.

She couldn't tell Steve. Hodge had proven himself the worst sort of person, which meant he was likely the right sort of despicable to break loyalty and testify against Steve for the right price. 

Peggy made it to the street, walked the familiar path toward a main road, when a car horn startled her out of her reverie. She half expected to see Hodge there, even if she knew she’d left him. 

She wholly regretted not closing the door behind her and trapping him inside.

Steve rolled down the passenger side window of the car and leaned over so he could grin at her. “Thought you deserved your own personal chauffeur after your first day on your own. How’d it go?”

Peggy's smile felt strained, and that meant it likely looked it, too. She forced it wider. She pushed the morning out of her mind. “It was fine. There was just one today. Since when do you import guns?” she asked, sliding into the seat after he'd pushed the door open for her. 

"Me importing guns? Gosh, Betty, sounds dangerous." His smirk was barely contained.

She pulled her belt into place. “Are they for your guys, or do you sell them?”

“For us, mostly. We’ll give some to our allies. Which,” he said, glancing at her after pulling onto the street, “is part of the reason I wanted to pick you up. You’ll be meeting some of the family today.”

Peggy glanced at the dock in the rearview mirror as they drove away, and settled into her seat. She could handle herself if it ever came down to it. She wouldn’t compromise the mission.

“You okay?” Steve asked. She registered too late that he'd said something else.

She shook herself, brightened her expression. “Sorry. I’m meeting friends of yours?”

“I like to think of them as family members."

"Isn't it soon to be meeting family?" The joke fell flat. She grimaced as she looked out the window.

"Think of them like the second tier," Steve continued, as if she hadn't spoken at all, "just after the guys.” He reached over her at a stoplight and pulled a squished bag out of the glove compartment, dropped it on her lap. “Here, breakfast sandwich. We don’t have time to stop.”

“I better be getting overtime,” she said, this time able to put some inflection into her voice. She opened the paper bag, tucked into the meal. She wasn’t hungry, but Betty had never refused food before. 

Steve laughed. “You’re getting something."

He put his hand on her thigh. She tensed. He noticed.

“You sure nothing’s wrong?” he asked, voice softer as he replaced his hand on the wheel. Anyone could say what they might about Steve, but he was a gentleman when it came down to it. A murderer and a smuggler among other things, perhaps, but he had always respected her boundaries when she'd made them clear.

She wondered if there was anything that might change that.

“I barely slept,” Peggy said, and shook her head. “Sorry.”

“We’ll get you coffee,” he decided, “I want you to pay attention today.”

The egg sandwich went down as easily as cardboard. She swallowed. “Perfect. Thank you.”

They drove through Staten Island, over the bridge, crossing the same waterway that she took most mornings. Once in Brooklyn again, Steve parked outside of the house she’d walked to with his letter all those months ago. At the time, the grass had been greyed with frost and was now a lusher green. The lawn was tended to, but not perfect, and the bushes in front could use trimming. They had bloomed in spring, the fallen petals beneath them a warning of how close summer was.

For a moment she pictured herself on a beach out on Long Island with Steve, enjoying the sun and the sand. She was sure he'd take her, if she was still here when it was nice enough. She hoped she would be.

Steve took her hand, took her up the walkway. “Don’t look so nervous,” he said gently, and kissed her cheek. “She can sense fear.”

“Can she?” Peggy asked, with a Betty giggle. 

“More or less.” Steve pulled out his key. She’d have to try and get one of those if the house had anything interesting in it.

As soon as they stepped in, she saw that there wasn’t anything interesting. In fact, other than the stairs straight ahead and the empty rooms around them, there was _nothing._ The room on their left was carpeted, the other hardwood, and in the entry way the flooring was slate. It was all pristine, as if it had never suffered furniture moved in or out. 

A door next to the stairs was slightly ajar, a light coming through the crack. Steve pulled it open further and motioned for her to go down a revealed staircase. At Peggy’s slight hesitation, he put his hand on her back and gave her a gentle nudge that even Betty could easily resist. 

“She might be scary, but she only bites if you want her to,” he promised, and kissed the back of her neck. 

Peggy let out a breath. He trusted her. She could trust him. The house itself might give the impression of a trap, but Steve being there was a comfort. She went, listening to make sure he was behind her. 

The basement was all white carpet, white walls. There was one door that Peggy guessed was a closet, a few couches, some assorted seats, a card table in the middle of the room with two tall chairs on either side of it. One was occupied by a severe looking redhead. 

She didn’t look up as Peggy came in and waited by the bottom of the stairs until Steve guided her further. He pulled a smaller chair over to the table for Peggy, before taking the seat opposite the woman. “Betty, this is Natasha. Natasha, Betty.”

Natasha lifted an eyebrow, finally deigning to look at her.

Peggy held out a hand. “I’m his secretary.”

“Nice to meet you, secretary,” Natasha said. Her voice had an amused lilt to it. “How would you describe me, Rogers?”

“Nat’s our Russian contact.” 

Of course Steve had ties to the Russian Mob. Jesus bloody Christ. 

“What does Russia want with Brooklyn?” Betty asked, brow furrowed in confusion.

Natasha snorted. “She’s cute. Where’d you meet her?”

“A bodega.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” Steve grinned, folded his hands on the table. “Let’s get down to brass tacks, here. How’s the network coming?”

Natasha leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. “We’re extending it. As planned.”

“Manhattan?”

“We’re figuring out how to cross that bridge.” Natasha smirked. “So to speak.”

As soon as they’d started talking, Peggy could see this room for what it was: neutral meeting ground. Deeper in the Russian territory of Brooklyn. The seating arrangement, their opposite places at the table, the updates, the posturing. They were friends, but without full trust. That was a better situation than if he had their full cooperation.

“When you do, I expect a call. You’ll get whatever resources you need from me, so long as you plan on scratching my back in the future. So to speak.”

Natasha looked between them. “How much does she know?”

Steve looked at Peggy, then to the door on the other side of the room before meeting Natasha’s gaze. What was in that closet? Weapons? More supplies? Another room?

“She doesn’t know everything. But she knows enough.”

Natasha stood with a brisk nod. “You’re checking in on Barton today?”

“I am. Last I heard, things were going well on his end.” 

“They are.” 

Steve stood. He motioned for Peggy to do the same. “And the rumors? Those true?”

Natasha looked between the two of them. “We might both have a thing for blonds.”

He laughed. “Bucky’s gonna be heartbroken.”

“Who says he’s upset with the arrangement?” Natasha held out her hand and shook Steve’s with a firm grip. “Keep in touch. I expect my supplies by the end of the day.”

“Send your guys to the club after dark.” 

“She seemed nice,” Peggy said, once they were back in the car, headed up through Brooklyn. “Who’s the guy she was talking about?”

“She is nice. Barton's our next stop.” 

The next stop was an apartment building in Bed-Stuy that didn’t look like much from the outside. It had a crumbling brick exterior and spray painted graffiti that covered portions of some windows. There was a kid, early teens, scrubbing one clean. 

A guy in a cut off tee that showed off his muscles was leaning against the wall next to him, chatting easily, and held up a hand to wave as soon as Steve had stopped the car. 

He then spent their walk to the building’s front door fighting with it. “Door’s been jamming. Shit. Hold on,” the man said, jiggling his key, and then the door, and then jammed his palm into a spot above the lock. It clicked open.

“You should get that fixed,” Steve said, holding the door open for Peggy to follow the man in.

“I’ve got some other stuff to do first. Hot water tank’s been on the fritz, and a few tenants can’t pay this month, so I’m floating them through.” He rubbed at the back of his neck and looked around the small lobby of the building as if trying to see it through their eyes and realizing that they’d agree it wasn’t much.

Everything from the way he held himself to the creases around his eyes said he was a good man. It was such a stark difference from that morning that it caught her off guard. 

He smiled at Peggy when he noticed her staring. “Hey, I’m Clint.”

“Betty,” Peggy said with a soft, faltering smile. His eyes darted over her face, his head tilted a little, and he looked like he was about to say something else but Steve clapped him on the shoulder.

“Good to see you’re doing your building proud, Barton. And your favorite redhead says hi.”

Clint beamed at the both of them. “You saw Nat today? I should check in with her, I think she wanted an update on where I stood with renovation.”

Steve pointed to the stairs. “Why don't you fill us in somewhere more private?”

They followed him up four flights - Peggy considered suggesting an elevator as part of his renovations - to a door he pushed open. “You don’t lock it?” Steve asked, clearly amused.

“Nah, no one in here’s gonna bother their new favorite landlord.”

Clint had to step over a dog to get to his kitchen table. “It’s thanks to Nat and Steve that I got to save this place and the other tenants,” he explained to Peggy as she followed him, the surprise on her face clear enough for him to read. “Believe me, I’m the last guy I’d expect to own a building either. Okay, so, basement blueprints.” He moved some half empty takeout containers, a newspaper, and pulled a pile of papers out from under them. He handed them to Steve. A few beer cans that were made unsteady by the mess being jostled tumbled to the floor. “Here’s what I’ve got.”

Steve looked close to laughing. He took the papers and sat on the couch, laying them out on the coffee table after clearing space. “Did you start yet?”

“Waiting on your word, but I had a contractor I trust come in and check the place out,” Clint said, walking over and leaning down to point to something. “This is where he said we should start. I’ll give you his name, if you want, but he’s a good guy, doesn’t know what we’re planning.”

Peggy took a step closer, trying to see what she could learn from the layout of the basement, wondering what they were planning herself.

Someone passed in the hallway. The dog barked. Peggy jumped, eyes wide. 

“Lucky, buddy, it’s just the neighbors,” Clint said, crouching to pet his head. He frowned up at Peggy. 

“I gotta make a call. Bathroom?” Steve said, rolling the papers and hanging onto them. Clint pointed him in the direction, and as soon as the door was shut, popped up, stepped closer to Peggy.

He kept a respectable distance, though, put his hands in his pockets. “You’re safe here,” he said gently, and before Peggy could ask what he was talking about, he looked to the door and back at her. “Steve… he treats you okay? Doesn’t hurt you?”

“Of course not. Steve’s lovely.”

“I know he can be an aggressive guy. And you seem kinda jumpy. That’s usually a sign.”

“It’s been a long day,” Peggy said, more than a little unnerved at how well Clint could read her. She wished she could look into his background. His kindness could stem from a history of being exposed to unsavory people, if he was that quick to spot mistreatment.

Clint ripped off a piece of newspaper, scribbled his number down and handed it over. “If you ever need anything.”

Peggy knew refusing would only look more suspicious to him, and was putting it in her purse when Steve came out of the bathroom. Clint took a step back and smiled easily at Steve. “All good?”

“All good. We’ve got the supplies for you. They'll be here at three a.m. If you’re not waiting outside, my guys are leaving.”

Clint held up his thumb. “Three or else. Got it.”

“Keep in touch if you need anything, or if the reno’s too much for your tenants. Shouldn’t be too loud, though.” He came over, held his free hand out to Peggy and she took it, grounding herself in his warm hand.

“Thank you, Clint,” she said, smiling back at him. 

They descended the stairs in silence. Got into the car in silence. He tossed the rolled up papers, now bound by a rubber band, in the back. Started the car. 

“What was that?” he finally asked.

“What was what?”

“What’d he give to you?”

Peggy was quiet. She bit the inside of her cheek. “He wasn’t flirting, if that's what you're worried about.”

They were both quiet. Steve honked at a car that cut him off. She tensed, stared straight through the windshield.

Steve pulled the car to a halt outside his building. He slammed his door shut and came around to open her door. “Get out. We’re going to talk.”

He didn’t say another word until they were upstairs and inside, the door shut behind them. She hadn’t been back here since the rooftop party when she’d met his friends, but was too distracted by his anger to be excited about that fact.

He crossed his arms, stood in front of the door to make it clear Peggy wouldn’t be leaving until he was ready. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” Peggy said with a sigh. She hung her arms by her side, not wanting to seem defensive.

“Is this about this morning?”

The muscles around her lips tightened. She attempted to smooth them. “What about this morning?”

He took a step closer, and then another, looming over her. “You knew we worked with weapons, Betty. I can’t have you getting scared because you see a few guns.”

“It’s not—”

“No? Are you worried I’m going to use one on you? Because I’ve been carrying most of the time we’ve known each other, sweetheart, and that hasn’t stopped you before." He let out a harsh laugh. "I’m pretty sure the last time you saw it on me it only made you want me more.” She flushed at the accusation, even if he wasn’t wrong. 

“Your gun doesn’t turn me on.”

“No, but the danger of it does,” Steve continued. “But I’m not the only one with a gun, and that's not going to change. So you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on or you’re going to find yourself on the wrong side of one.”

Peggy looked him over, annoyed that he was resorting to threatening her. “You’re not making me feel any better.”

Steve’s voice darkened. “Did someone from the feds approach you? Is that what this is about?”

She looked up at him in surprise. “What? No, nothing like that. Why? Are they after you?”

“You better think about your answer again, Bet, because if I can’t trust you, then you’ll find yourself out of a job real quick, and this isn’t the kind of job you can walk away from.”

“No. No one approached me,” she said, her voice stronger. She rubbed at her face in frustration. Goddamn Hodge. Screw the intel the Agency could get from him. If she was threatening the mission by keeping this secret from Steve, then it was far more important to talk to him about it. 

And if she got a vicious thrill from the idea at him suffering proper payback, the kind that she herself couldn’t do as Betty, or as a government agent, she wasn’t going to lose sleep over it.

“Then talk,” Steve said, eyes narrowing. 

“Clint wasn’t flirting,” Peggy said eventually, tucking her hair back, her shoulders slumping. “He noticed I was jumpy and was worried that you were hurting me.”

Steve looked so taken aback her first instinct was to hug him. She wrapped her arms around herself instead. “You told him that was ridiculous?”

“I did.” Peggy looked down. Something about the situation made tears spring to her eyes and she tried to blink them away. The helplessness she’d felt that morning - had been forced to feel - was something she hadn’t experienced in years, ever since before training, before she could look at a man and assess the easiest ways to bring him down. Needing to submit herself to it might be having more of an effect on her than she’d thought if she was crying this easily, this unintentionally. “This morning, Hodge…cornered me.”

His expression went from angry, to confused, to absolutely murderous in a split second. He touched her chin with an uncharacteristic gentleness and tilted her head up. “What happened, Betty?”

“He pushed me against the wall. Groped me.” She swallowed. Her voice was mechanical. “I hit him. Got away.”

Steve pulled her into a tight hug. She wrapped her arms around him, melted into the embrace, buried her face in his chest. She knew he had a gun on him. Knew he had just threatened her multiple times. But she also knew she hadn’t felt as safe as she did in his arms. He was warm and strong and as much as Betty needed that, Peggy appreciated it even more.

“You’re safe now,” he said, an edge to his voice. After what could have been an eternity, when Peggy stopped shaking - and when had she started shaking? - he walked her to the couch, sat her down, tucked a quilt around her, and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I’ll be back. Call Bucky if you need anything, even if you just don't want to be alone, and he'll be here.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, her voice meek. She knew exactly where he was going, exactly what he was going to do, exactly how this would play out. And maybe that was part of the reason she hadn’t wanted to bother with the police—Hodge wouldn’t have gotten what was coming for him.

She had as much bloodlust rolling inside of her as was reflected in Steve’s eyes when he brushed his fingers down her cheek. “I’m going to take care of it.” 

Steve kissed her. He left. She pulled the blanket tighter around her in the room as it grew colder.

_Good_ , she thought, and wiped at her eyes. _Good._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summary: Peggy goes to the docks on her own for the first time and sees an entire container full of weapons. Interacts with Hodge. Steve drives her to the house she'd brought the letter to earlier on in the story, and there's nothing inside. They meet with Natasha in the basement, who is with the Russian mob, discuss the network they're building together. Then he brings her to meet Clint, landlord of a building where he discusses with Steve basement renovations he's doing with his and Natasha's approval. Steve finds out what happens with Hodge, goes to "take care of it."
> 
> Other notes: 
> 
> \- the Narrows is the channel of water between Staten Island and Brooklyn
> 
> \- Bay Ridge where the house is, and southernish Brooklyn is more of a Russian area
> 
> \- Listen. I couldn't decide between Bucky having some kind of on/off relationship with Natasha or the idea of Nat finding this guy Clint and recruiting him and having some fun with him bc she's so charmed by him, so I've decided they've got something with the three of them that they're all happy with and you guys can fill in the details of that yourself if you feel inclined
> 
> \- Originally I plotted thirteen chapters for this, and now I'm up to seventeen, so who knows where we're going to end up. But, if you like to have an idea of these kinds of things, the next few chapters are probably around the midpoint of the story!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's some discussion of graphic violence in this chapter, but none happens on screen!

It was nearing sunset when Steve had left, and Peggy let his apartment go dark around her while she stared numbly at the blank screen of the television.

A knock on the door woke her from a nap she hadn't meant to take. With the quilt still wrapped around her, she peered through the peephole, and opened the door for Bucky.

"Steve gave me your order. Hope you don't mind if I join you," he said, holding up a plastic bag of takeaway from which the smell of fried rice wafted toward her. Bucky walked past her, careful to maintain his distance, and after flicking on the light, set up their dinner on the coffee table. 

"I thought you'd be with him," she said after a moment. From what she knew, Bucky was always at his side for anything unsavory. 

Peggy joined him on the couch and he handed her a container of food, a pair of chopsticks.

"Steve put me on a more important job."

"Food delivery?"

"Security guard."

The first bite melted in her mouth, and sank into her grumbling, empty stomach. She hadn't realized how hungry she was. Her last meal had been in the car when Steve had picked her up that morning. "Do you know when Steve will be back?"

"No," Bucky said. He took a bite of an egg roll, caught the crumbs in his lap, brushed them in the bag when he was finished. “But he’ll be back for you as soon as he can.”

They ate side by side, the emptiness of the apartment around the living room unable to touch them in the halo of the overhead light.

“You know,” Bucky started out of the blue, putting his empty container of sweet and sour chicken on the coffee table. He turned to look at her. “I really don’t know much about you, other than what Steve’s told me. And how much you like pork fried rice.”

“I’m not that interesting,” Peggy said with a small smile. She pulled her knees up to her chest. She didn’t remember taking her shoes off, but must have done it before she’d fallen asleep; they were scattered under the table. 

He tossed her a fortune cookie and she popped the plastic seal open. “You say that, but you didn’t flinch at getting involved in all of this.”

She put a piece of the cookie in her mouth, held it there until it softened before she chewed. “I didn’t really know what I was getting into. Not until recently,” she admitted, easily keeping her voice earnest with how true it all was. “But I knew Steve. I trusted him. I trust him now.” 

“He’s a good guy,” Bucky agreed, a soft pull to his lips that was almost a smile. “A fucking idiot most of the time, but a good guy.”

Peggy laughed and crunched on another bite. “He’s not an idiot.”

“Where you’re concerned, he is.”

"He's been sweet. Considerate." She pulled her hair back into a loose ponytail, annoyed with the way the curls felt on her neck. Her hair had been bothering her more and more lately. She’d had to touch up her roots a few times, and she was considering changing the style to something different from herself, but more sophisticated for Betty. Steve would like that, she thought. "You didn't seem to like me at first. Was that why?"

Bucky blew out a breath, cracked his cookie open. "Steve falls hard and fast. Something about you drew him in. 'Listen to your heart when it knocks,'" he read, and balled it up in his hand, tossed it into the bag with the other trash and snorted a laugh.

She read her fortune only once her cookie was gone. "'Your hard work will pay off soon.' I hope so. I've been knee deep in spreadsheets for half a year now," she said with a laugh. "I hope you all appreciate my organizational skills."

“Who said we don’t appreciate them?”

“It’s not as if you and Falsworth go out of your way to be nice to me.” She wrinkled her nose.

"Well, I don’t think you’re too bad, Carver."

"Such a compliment," Peggy said with a laugh. "You're not terrible yourself."

Bucky got up and took their trash, doubled back for an ambitious stack of the leftovers to carry to the fridge. "Will you be alright here on your own tonight? I can stay, or take you home."

She pulled the quilt around her again. He hadn't left and already the place felt cavernous. "I'll be okay. Thanks for checking on me."

"You have my number right? Call me for anything. Seriously, whatever you need." 

As soon as he was gone, she locked the door. There were two deadbolts and a heavy chain, which she left undone so Steve could get in.

Peggy found a glass and filled it with tap water, and after downing a second glass she forced herself to put the quilt back on the couch. She was being ridiculous, anyway, carrying it around on her shoulders like a child. Steve had guns here, surely, so she could protect herself should anyone come in. And yet, being wrapped in something of Steve's was nice in a way she wasn't going to think about. 

Her phone buzzed, startling her. It was a coded Facebook message from a contact at the agency, likely Thompson. He asked for an update on the day and location for the intel package hand off, and when she said she didn't know yet, didn't have it ready, she could hear his annoyance in the silence that followed.

_We need something now,_ his next message read, once she’d picked through the code.

_Check trucks coming into Brooklyn._

It was all she was willing to offer at the moment; they could confiscate some of his weapons and drugs, and she wouldn't have to worry about them being brought into the community.

For some reason, she couldn’t muster the energy to snoop through Steve's things at the moment, though she did look through his drawers to find a pair of sweatpants and a shirt of his that she could sleep in, and then made herself comfortable in his bed. She’d left the light on in the living room, as well as the lamp on his bedside table, not wanting to deal with the dark. 

Peggy fell asleep quickly in the yellow light, the familiar smell of Steve on the pillows. 

The bed moved. The light had changed, coming in through the window slanted and blue. Steve climbed in next to her and she sleepily curled into his chest. He was topless, his bare chest soft, and was wearing nothing but his boxers. A cursory look around the room revealed his discarded clothes had dark stains that looked black in the room's shadows. 

“Go back to sleep,” Steve said, stroking her side. He pressed a kiss to her hair, but it was too much, all of it, _Steve_ and being in his bed, the things he’d done for her, the tension building between them since he’d first taken over her basket in the bodega, and the floodgates that Peggy had so far kept close with varying success burst open all at once. 

Peggy tilted her head back, her hand finding a place in the hair on the back of his neck, and guided him into a kiss, slow and loving and fuck, _fuck_.

Steve kissed her back with just as much care, just as much tenderness to the point that it was painful. Her entire chest felt like it was going to crack open.

“I want you,” she breathed, swallowing as tears pressed at the back of her eyes, and she touched his face with hesitant fingertips. This moment between them would break if she thought about it too hard.

“Not right now.” He took her hand by the wrist, kissed the pad of each finger. “It’ll feel like I’m taking advantage of you, sweetheart.”

Peggy moved closer for another kiss, but this one hungrier, with intent behind it, and the sound she made against his lips had all of her unsaid emotions behind it. “Please.” She moved their tangled hands to her ribcage where the borrowed shirt she wore was starting to ride up. Steve’s mouth opened as if to protest. “I want this,” she said, adamant, keeping his gaze. “I want to feel nothing but you.”

His resolve crumbled before her eyes. 

Steve slid his hand up her shirt, and it was careful, slow, waiting for her to change her mind. She arched into it as he brought his mouth to her neck. “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he breathed, and she gasped when he pinched her nipple. 

His chuckle had her shoving her sweats down along with her underwear, and his hand must have been chasing her clothes—somehow it was already dragging through the wet heat of her.

“Yes,” Peggy hissed as soon as he pressed two thick fingers into her, pushing and curling and unrelenting, and she let her knees fall open for him. He hovered over her, and she felt it for what it was, what he was, a shield from the rest of the world. She shivered, looked up at him. “Fuck me.”

“Getting there,” Steve murmured, nipping at her ear as he rocked his fingers down, his thumb rubbing against her. “Impatient.”

“I’ve been waiting so long, Steve.” She put her previously useless hands to work, pushed at his boxers until they were down off his hips. She lost her breath all over again when she saw him, already hard enough to curve up against his stomach, and he must have been wanting this as long as she had. He was irresistible, and she had a hand curled around him before she had the conscious thought to reach out.

Steve’s grunt went straight through her, and he removed his fingers from her, caught her again, thumb brushing over the tangle of veins on the inside of her wrist as he removed her hand. 

There was an aching emptiness inside her which Steve took long seconds to fill, and she saw stars as he did, eyes closed to the morning light with a hitch of breath. 

“You feel perfect.” Steve’s voice was raspy as he rocked above her. She wrapped her legs around him, dug her fingers in his hair as every move of his hips pulled a satisfied sound from her. 

His rhythm grew erratic and she reached between them for her clit, but he stopped her, pinned her down to the pillow, shook his head. “I got it." He splayed his hand on her abdomen, his thumb rubbing at her in double time to his thrusts. She moaned, turned her head to the side, which only gave her a view of Steve’s arm holding him up, his muscles straining. 

Steve stopped, and Peggy whined. His hand gripped her chin, turning her head so she was facing him. 

“You’re mine,” he told her, only then rubbing her again, pressing harder, hips moving faster, and she gasped, the months of foreplay, of danger, of getting off thinking about him, to not being allowed to get of at all, it swelled as he leaned down and breathed, “ _Mine,_ ” in her ear, and her climax shook through her for a minute that felt like an eternity. 

He didn’t stop, only letting up on her clit when he was coming inside her, and she was so oversensitive, as if Steve had charged every nerve ending, was touching every single one of them at once. He jerked into her with a final noise low in his throat, and settled on his side. 

Peggy was quite sure her bones had melted. Thankfully, he took the initiative to roll her onto her side and wrap around her, an arm over her waist protectively.

“Will you sleep now?” Steve asked with a smile in his voice, and Peggy mumbled something that was meant to be snarky, but it came out unintelligible, and she was far too relaxed to bother forming the words, let alone figuring out what she’d meant to say in the first place. 

She put her arm over his, reveling in the sticky, too hot layer of sweat between them. It would be uncomfortable later, but right now it was everything.

The fact that Peggy had been sleeping since nearly dinnertime didn’t seem to register with her body, and she woke up well into the morning. The bed was empty beside her, and she could hear him in the kitchen, a coffee machine starting to percolate.

She pulled on the borrowed shirt again, found the bathroom, cleaned herself up, rinsed her mouth out and scrubbed at her teeth with some toothpaste on a finger, and when she joined him in the kitchen he had a steaming mug in his hands and was looking at her like a starving man.

Steve looked particularly handsome himself in nothing but his boxers. His hair stuck up at angles she was sure she was responsible for.

His eyes followed her closely enough to make her blush as she got a mug of coffee, and helped herself to some milk from the fridge. “Thanks for letting me stay here last night,” Peggy said, and stepped closer.

Steve’s arm slotted around her waist and pulled her in. He leaned down to kiss her. Their height difference when she wasn't wearing shoes only had her enjoying being held more. “You’re welcome to stay here any time. Especially if you’re planning on wearing this outfit,” he joked, one hand sliding down to pinch the bottom of her ass where his shirt didn’t reach.

She grinned and sipped her coffee. “Did you get any sleep at all? You came in so late.”

“I slept enough,” he said with a shrug, his eyes bright with a quick flash of danger. It felt like a challenge: would she press for more information?

Peggy swallowed. The coffee burned at the back of her throat. “What did you do?”

“Last night?”

“To Hodge.”

Steve’s voice got lower and his knuckles turned white on the coffee mug. “Do you really want to know, Betty?”

No. Maybe.

She nodded. 

He put his coffee down, moved both of his hands to her ass and slid them up under her shirt. “Dugan and I took him to a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. We tied him to a chair.”

“And?”

“I cut off his fingers, one by one,” Steve leaned forward, pressed a kiss to her neck, “so he could never touch anyone again. I made it slow, painful. I sewed up the injuries so he wouldn’t bleed out.”

She shivered, pressed against him. 

“I took out one of his eyes, but left the other so he could see what I was doing. I made him watch as I sawed off his poor excuse for a dick. I made him beg me to let him go with a gun to his head, so I could refuse him every single time.”

Steve was hard against her. She dropped to her knees on an impulse, started to tug his boxers down, kissed the junction of his hip. “Tell me.”

“And then,” Steve said, curling his fingers in her hair, “after he passed out from the pain, I woke him again, so he would be awake when we dropped him in the Narrows.”

“Good,” Peggy said, her voice dark as she stroked his cock, the heat rolling off of him in waves. She looked up at him. “He deserved it.”

“He deserved worse. I’ll kill a thousand people before anyone ever gets to you again,” he said, and then he didn’t say much at all as she swallowed him down. 

His gentleness from last night was gone, and he took what he wanted, holding her as he fucked into her throat, fast and dirty, and Peggy was drooling around his cock that still tasted vaguely of herself when he came. 

She didn’t manage to take it all, had to wipe at the corners of her mouth, and before she could catch her breath Steve was pulling her up by her hair, lifting her onto the counter, stepping between her legs and filling her with his fingers. Her head banged backward into a cabinet as his fingers pounded into her, and she moaned wantonly, gripping at his shoulders.

“Does it turn you on, knowing that the hand inside you tortured someone last night?” he growled, and when she shook her head, he left her empty to stuff his fingers in her mouth. She moaned at the the feeling of her lips stretched around him again, her tongue sliding between his wet fingers.

She didn't try to respond and he reached up to pinch her nose shut, her eyes going wide as he pushed his fingers deeper. “Don’t you dare lie to me, Betty. I know you by now. Tell me the truth."

For a moment she thought he meant about everything - who she really was - but there was only arousal when she met his eyes, a dark humor, and when he let her breathe freely again her lungs filled and her body shook, and she was so wet, likely soaking the shirt, or the counter, or both. She reached between her legs. He gripped her arm, smacked her gently across the cheek with her own hand. “What did I say about touching yourself? Come on. You don’t get my fingers until you tell me.”

Peggy clenched on air, and was sure she had never been more turned on in her life. Her voice was gravelly when she finally answered. “It does.” 

He rewarded her by pinching her clit, hard. She shouted. “Be more specific.”

“It turns me on that you killed him,” she said, high pitched, desperate, and as soon as she did, she was blissfully full again, and he was kissing her, tongue pressing over hers, fingers thick and warm as he had been inside of her earlier that morning.

Peggy hunched forward as she came, gasping, tears in her eyes. Steve wrapped his arms around her, held her close. “I got you, baby,” he murmured, and she buried her face in his neck. 

He carried her to the shower. Helped her out of her shirt after he got himself undressed. They were able to focus on getting clean for the majority of the time, but she started to help him wash his torso while peppering kisses to his collarbone, and brushed her nails over his pecs, and got herself pressed up against the cool tile of the shower wall for her efforts.

Steve found clothes for Peggy - another shirt of his, the pair of sweatpants from the night before that had gotten tangled in her sheets - and left her sitting on the bed to toss her clothes in the laundry machine in his hall closet. He walked nude with such confidence, and really, who could blame him? He looked as if he'd been carved from marble, and Peggy certainly wasn’t about to complain at the view. 

She didn’t complain after he put pants on, either, even when they argued over the best way to eat their breakfast of leftovers.

(“You reheat it? No way, cold is the way to go.”

“That’s barbaric, Steve. All leftovers are better hot.”

“Not pizza.”

“Especially pizza!”

“It’s amazing I’m letting you stay here a second longer when you’re so wrong.”)

It was all so domestic. 

In the back of her head, Peggy was thinking that she could get Steve on a murder charge. It wasn’t precisely what the Agency wanted, but she knew where the body was, knew who he was with, knew the time frame and a rough idea of where it had happened. 

It wouldn’t crumble the entire organization, but without Steve, she knew they’d falter for some time. Enough time for her to make more crucial blows to their suppliers, to the few people in the NYPD and in the local government that she knew he had on payroll.

The Narrows was the deepest waterway in the city, and the currents would pull anything out into the ocean. She needed to act fast if she wanted them to find the body. She knew that if Hodge’s murder came up after the mission was over and she hadn’t told them anything about it, she’d have to play dumb or face more punitive action that would derail her career even further.

Steve wouldn’t question it if she sent a text.

And yet. 

And yet, deep in her bones, she knew she was glad that Hodge was off the streets and not hurting anyone else, that he had truly suffered first, and if Steve was taken in for murder, she’d be a suspect in his organization and would therefore be pulled off the job and wouldn’t be able to get any more of the intel she was still hoping to gather. 

And she wouldn’t get to see Steve anymore, except perhaps at a trial where she would be testifying. 

Steve dropped a bite of lo mein from his chopsticks on the way to his mouth, and looked so disappointed that she had to laugh.

Her phone buzzed. It was another coded message. _Checking trucks Tuesday. Be ready to go to ground._

Peggy didn’t reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, that chapter was a long time coming! (and I'll see myself out with that pun ;)


	10. Chapter 10

Peggy spent the night in Steve’s bed again. While she was sleeping, his discarded clothes from the day before disappeared. She didn’t bother asking him what he’d done with them—it didn’t matter if she knew whether they were bleached or incinerated. The less she knew about it, the better.

The next night she went back to her own flat. Steve joined her. 

For all of the amount of time they spent in bed, there wasn’t much sleeping involved

“I should go,” Steve said that morning. It was Monday. The Agency’s interference was a day away. He’d gotten up and pulled on his clothes, sat on the edge of the bed and twisted back to look at her, eyes tracing her curves that the sheets barely covered. Peggy knew the bubble of endorphins from the last few days had to burst soon, but that didn’t mean she was excited about it happening. “I’ll see you at the office?”

She pushed herself up, letting the sheet fall away, to give him a slow kiss. “You will.” 

“Bring coffee for the both of us. Someone kept me up all night.” His grin was beatific. Hers was the same.

“I seem to recall you encouraging me to stay awake for another round.”

“Details, details.” He gave her one more kiss, and she could taste how reluctant he was to leave in the pull of his lips. 

She took an extra ten minutes in the shower, which was wasteful compared to her normal five minute scrub. Peggy turned the water hotter, imagined that she was exfoliating away the meek layer of Betty that had enjoyed following Steve’s orders the past few days, letting him drag her around by her hair, fill her however he wanted.

She scrubbed herself again and imagined getting rid of the layer of Peggy that had enjoyed all that, too.

She did not allow herself to take any liberties while washing up, hands steady and clinical.

Peggy hadn’t heard more from Thompson, but she knew they’d begin checking trucks as soon as she’d left the docks after Tuesday's shipment, and she needed to be prepared. She knelt down, grabbed the notebook from beneath the floorboard and flipped through, making sure it was up to date with important information. She spent some more time jotting down a note about the Russians, the landlord Steve was in touch with.

Still, she wasn’t ready for the hand off, as there was more she was missing, a crucial detail she didn't understand; they needed some sort of base of operations, and she’d yet to figure out where that was, or how and where the trades were happening.

For someone who spent the entire day in his office, Steve managed to get a hell of a lot done, which only spoke to how efficient he was at running the organization. Perhaps the way he was able to avoid getting caught was by letting others do the work for him, only dictating to them what needed to be done.

He had mentioned a warehouse. It seemed almost too obvious, but if she managed to survive the next day, she’d try and get Steve to take her there. 

Work passed by in a surprisingly normal manner. Steve watched her all morning while she tried to focus, and when she returned from lunch he was gone, his coffee still sitting on the desk and the rug rumpled as if he’d left in a hurry. She asked Bucky about it, but he only shrugged. 

“I told you the guy’s an idiot. It’s your fault for not believing me.”

Betty laughed and finished her work, went home, made a simple chicken dish and ate on her couch. She thought about Steve, his clever fingers, the mouth on him. The blood that had caught under his fingernails. The way his laugh was looser and quicker to come after a few beers. The excitement with which he'd discussed torture. The photos of his mother in his apartment. She thought about how she might never see him again after tomorrow. 

Peggy didn’t pack. It would have given her away if anyone stopped by. Instead, she made sure she was wearing trainers instead of flats, leggings again instead of a skirt, and had a small gun tucked in a secret-yet-easily-accessible pocket in the lining of her purse, just in case. It wasn’t like Steve was in the habit of sending her through a metal detector, so she'd be able to keep it concealed. 

Tuesday morning arrived with a summer storm, and she zipped her trench coat up as far as it would go. Her hair had already gotten soaked on the boat ride to the docks, and her curls were unwound and sticking to the side of her face.

Hodge wasn’t there - and Peggy’s mind flashed back to Steve’s kitchen - but Leeds and Nadir were. They didn’t make any eye contact. There were two other workers that she didn’t recognize. It astounded her how quickly Steve had been able to fill the position.

She compared the delivery with the manifest Steve had sent her the night before, and chatted with the new workers in an attempt to drag out the time she spent there, not leaving until after she saw them loading the boxes of supplies onto two-wheelers, and up into a few waiting trucks. With the back hatches open and the ramps attached she couldn't get the license plate numbers, but the white, nondescript trucks were enough to go on, so she sent a description to Jack on her phone before deleting the message.

Peggy took a cab to the office where Steve was waiting, and brought donuts and coffee for the both of them to explain away being late.

“Where did you go yesterday?” Peggy asked, letting him pull her into his lap.

“I was here,” he said, distracted as he played with the sheer fabric of her shirt. She was tempted to go into the bathroom and take off the camisole she had underneath just to tease him, but didn’t want to miss anything she could otherwise overhear in the office.

She kissed below his ear, kept her voice soft. “After lunch. You left?”

“Right. Had to meet someone.”

His hands braced her ribcage, and if she’d thought it'd been a tease to be touched by him a week ago, it was unbearable now to know how those hands felt as she was writhing beneath him, being brought undone by their every movement. “Should we lock the door?” she asked.

Steve nipped at her collarbone, just above her shirt. “I should get some things done today. You get back to work and stop distracting me.”

“You’re the one being handsy, Steve,” she said with a giggle, sliding off his lap and giving him a peck on the cheek. “Tell me if you need anything from me.”

“Just sit there and look pretty.”

“And keep track of all of your various business dealings, shipments, and the money you’re spending on renovations to the club?”

Steve beamed. “That too.”

The minutes ticked by slowly. She kept glancing at the time, wondering why they hadn’t found anything yet. It took concentrated effort to not check her phone where it was in her purse, resting against her ankle. If she got a text, she’d feel it vibrate. There was no way she’d miss it with how on edge she was. 

The text would be the warning, and she knew the plan. Go get coffee. Take a cab. Go to the Agency HQ without looking back. The agents milling about Brooklyn would fall in on her apartment, the office, and then once they had the information she’d left for them, Steve’s place, the club, the docks.

She made herself get through the work without looking visibly distracted.

No message came from her contact.

At four thirty, Bucky walked in, eyes steely as he caught Steve’s attention. He tilted his head toward the shop. Steve followed him out. They closed the door. She strained to listen, heard something about the bridge, but no specifics.

When Steve came back in, he was angry. “Let me see your computer." 

Her heart raced. She should have called out sick. 

Peggy rolled her chair back, dragging her purse with her ankle as if to get it out of his way. She motioned for him to take over, used a particularly American phrase, “What’s up?”

Steve gave a minute shake of his head, and hunched over, pulling up a few of files she’d worked on the week before.

There was no route out other than the front door. She could get her purse, her gun. She might get the drop on Bucky, and she could aim for his prosthetic that he'd opted to wear that day. He’d feel the impact, but not be injured. She could aim somewhere else, if she needed. His shoulder, perhaps. Somewhere already injured, somewhere he wouldn’t lose more functionality. 

She thought of eating takeaway next to him, the comfort he’d provided without intruding in her space, how Angie had once described him as a teddy bear.

Peggy really didn't want to shoot him.

After that, on the street, she’d run. The subway into Manhattan would be her best bet. She could transfer as many times as she needed, would be anonymous in the crowd. The taxi drivers that frequented the area were likely all Steve’s friends, anyway. 

Steve let out a huff. Her hand twitched. She was ready to move, muscles coiled to propel her down for her purse. 

“What is it?”

“Later,” Steve said sharply, shutting the laptop with too much force. “Day’s over. Go home.”

He got up, walked out, and she watched him, her heart too quick. She needed to slow it down, keep her cool. A fast pulse would only make her shaky if it came down to it. 

God, she’d been out of the field too long if her inability to keep it together was any indication. 

She pulled her raincoat on as she walked into the storefront, expecting an ambush. Bucky was all she found. He locked the door behind her. Steve was on the street, pacing in the rain, gesturing as he spoke on his phone.

“Is he alright?”

“He’ll survive,” Bucky said, pocketing the keys. “Have a goodnight.”

Peggy walked home with measured steps. She let herself into her flat with a slow turn of her key. She knew there’d be someone waiting, or some evidence they’d gone through her things. A firing squad, if Steve was feeling especially cruel. 

But there was nothing. No one. Not a hair out of place.

Either this was part of the torture from Steve, or something had gone wrong with the Agency. She ate her leftovers from dinner the night before with a mind for speed, staring at her phone, blank on the counter as she shoveled bites in her mouth over the sink. If she wanted to eat before running, she couldn’t wait for the microwave. 

When her mobile finally buzzed it was a message from Steve, inviting her to the club.

There wasn’t anything off about the text, nothing demanding or angry. It could be a trap.

It was likely a trap.

But on the off chance it wasn't a trap, she couldn't not show.

She let herself into Club Commando, her hand on her purse, ready to reach for her gun. Not that it would do her anything if she was outnumbered. All of Steve’s associates carried firearms.

Peggy hadn’t seen the place recently, and other than the layout, it was entirely unfamiliar. The floors had been polished and waxed, the walls cleaned, the bar sparkling. There were tables spread around under the wood beams of the ceiling, and the place looked rather upscale with the lights on low. 

Muffled voices came from the back room and she followed the sound, pushed open the door that hadn’t been fully shut.

It was a far cry from when she’d swept out the room and been accosted by Falsworth. It was clean, now, carpeted which spoke to this being a place of peace - no one wanted to deal with bloodstains in such a thick pile - with dark paneling lining the walls that she could tell made the room soundproof. Steve, Bucky, Angie, and Natasha respectively sat at the largest of the booths, round and against the wall, a lush, blood red curtain hanging open to reveal them there. The other booths were empty as well, no curtains closed, no one hiding and about to attack. Where there had been doors secreted in the walls the last time she was here she now saw closets, all open to shelving and empty space. 

Bucky was cleaning his gun on the table. None of the other three paid him any attention; It wasn't a threat. He was keeping his hand busy.

“Betty,” Steve said, without breaking his eye contact with Natasha. His arm was up on the back of the booth, and he lifted his hand to motion her over. She sat next to him in the open seat, set her purse next to her on the seat. 

“I wish I knew something,” Angie said with a sigh that sounded like it wasn’t her first of the evening. “I can reach out to my brother again, but he doesn’t tell me much. And I’m trying to discourage him from getting involved.”

Steve’s hand settled on Peggy’s shoulder, and gave it a gentle squeeze. Natasha was leaning back, her entire posture casual, but her eyes sharp, taking in everything. “We don’t need to drag him into it,” she said after a beat of silence all around. “The Italians don’t want to cooperate. It’ll put him in a bad position.”

“It’s an asset we should take advantage of. They might have more ties than we do,” Bucky pointed out.

"They definitely have more ties than we do."

“What’s going on?” Peggy asked Steve, voice low, when it became clear that she wasn’t about to be tortured for information. Or killed.

“Immigration set up a checkpoint on the Verrazano today,” he said, voice tight.

Ah. That must have been the cover the Agency was using. “What happened?”

“A family in the neighborhood arranged to bring their elderly mother up, and ICE picked her up today. No idea what kind of tip off they had, unless it was just shitty timing.”

“How much do you pay them to stay out of the neighborhood?” Natasha asked.

“Enough,” Steve said with a scowl. “They shouldn’t be interfering.”

“They really detained her?” Peggy asked, frowning. She could imagine what Phillips would say. _We were maintaining our cover. And they were breaking the law._ Bloody government agencies. It wasn’t as if MI6 was any better. She remembered, viscerally, the anger that coursed through her at the dressing down she’d received at work after the call she’d made that had resulted in her demotion. 

“It’s one woman,” Natasha pointed out, and crossed her arms. “You really want us to pitch in that much money?”

“She’ll die in custody,” Steve argued, “and we’ve got a lot of the funds already. It’s more about manpower. The threat of it.”

“How much are her last few years worth?”

“I don’t need you playing devil’s advocate, Romanov. Her family came to us for help. You’ve mentioned your contacts up by Buffalo? That's close enough to where she's being held.”

She pursed her lips. “It’ll put us behind.”

“I’ll cover us.”

“Wire the funds before midnight.” 

“Thank you,” Steve said, relief palpable in his exhale. 

Natasha stood, looked at Bucky, quirked an eyebrow. “Fancy a trip upstate? We could stop by the Falls.”

Bucky matched her expression. “I’ll get back to you.”

She shrugged a shoulder as she walked out.

“God, that lady gives me the creeps sometimes,” Angie said, wrinkling her nose. “Why do I feel like she’s always deciding the best way to kill me?”

“She probably is,” Bucky said, unhelpfully.

“We won’t pull on your brother’s connections if you don’t want us to,” Steve interrupted. “If Nat and her funding can get her out of the detention center, then we’ll be alright, but I might have to go through him to his ICE contact if this happens again.”

Angie narrowed her eyes. “Fine, but you’re buying me two weeks off after that, minimum. I want a vacation for me and my mother.”

Steve held out his hand across the table. “Deal.”

They shook on it, and Angie held his hand longer than necessary, brushing her thumb over the back of his hand while she met Peggy’s eyes. “I gotta work tonight, but we should really get together sometime.”

“You're not sleeping with my girlfriend, Angie.”

“I meant to hang out,” Angie stood with an unbothered grin, “but I’d screw you in a heartbeat, Betty.”

"I'm flattered," Peggy said with an embarrassed laugh. It wasn't as if she'd say no.

Bucky moved to fill the space in the booth after Angie left, giving Steve more room to pull Peggy into his lap. He secured an arm around her waist, hand on her abdomen over the waistband of her leggings. There was enough space between the edge of the table and her body to fit his hand comfortably. She imagined this was the sort of thing he took into consideration when planning the size to make the booths.

“Are they breaking this woman out?” Peggy asked, her legs moving open over Steve’s knees.

“If we can find the right guy to bribe,” Steve said with a nod. “Gotta move some change around first.” 

That’s what he’d needed from her computer, then; he was only looking at the accounts she’d been keeping track of. Peggy was still working on figuring out which were his main accounts - she was sure at least a few were decoys - but her best guess had Steve with more than enough 'change' to buy the Brooklyn Bridge on a whim.

The Network’s project likely cost a small fortune if they were getting pushed back by this one unplanned bribe.

His hand slipped into her leggings, her panties, and her breath caught. Bucky glanced up without lifting his head from where he was reassembling his gun. “Does that mean we’re done with the official portion of tonight’s meeting?”

“I don’t know that I’d say any of it was official.” Steve brushed a kiss to the back of her neck, ghosted his fingers over her clit as he slid his hand lower. His palm pressed against her. His finger circled her. Her eyes locked with Bucky’s, and she felt herself flush. 

“Am I invited to stay?” he asked.

“What do you think, Bet?”

Peggy pressed back against Steve’s chest, his warmth grounding her. “If... if he wants to.” 

With that permission, Steve pushed into her. Her eyes fluttered shut and she arched, turned her face to press to Steve’s hair, but he hummed, gently turned her head back toward Bucky. “I want you to keep your eyes open.”

She did as instructed.

Later, when her body still felt like it was thrumming from the attention, she was still anchoring herself through Steve, his hand in hers as he walked her home. He hadn’t let her get him off, likely too wound up from the events of the day. The show they gave Bucky was just that, she’d realized, when she was on her way to her second orgasm with one of Steve’s hands working inside of her and the other pulling down the cup of her bra, and Bucky watching with a hand in his pants; it was something to give Steve a sense of power to distract from how frustrated he'd been. 

Peggy was still waiting for an accusation from him, waiting for a mention that the deliveries hadn’t been made, for a question of what she knew about it, but they walked in silence. He must have been distracted by the Immigration issue and not noticed.

Her phone buzzed in her purse. She didn’t react. She couldn’t check it yet, not with Steve looking over her shoulder.

“Thanks for coming tonight,” he said as they approached her building, stopping just outside the front. He chuckled. “It was nice to have some kind of backup there. No one was on the same page and it was kind of getting to me. Plus, it’s good for you to start learning the ropes, you know?”

“I didn't do anything. And I thought I’ve been learning the ropes this whole time?” Peggy laughed.

“Well, you know, there’s all these pieces. We’ve got Angie and her brother’s ties to the Italians. That goes deep, though, and Nat and I tend to steer clear unless we need something bad enough. And Natasha’s great, but you heard her tonight.” He shook his head. “She can be cold. She sees numbers, not people. Which is useful, in some respects, but this kinda situation, less so.”

“She agreed to help, though, didn’t she?”

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face, his confidence cracking in the folds around his frown, the wrinkle in his forehead. “She did.”

Peggy stepped closer, wrapped her arms around his waist. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just, I do all this shit, spend every fucking day trying to keep people safe, keep ‘em in their homes, fed. It’s like having all these screaming children I can barely keep track of, you know? And I think I’m doing enough to keep them from getting tossed in detention camps, and then a day like today happens and I remember there’s all this bullshit I can’t keep out of this place, no matter what I do to try.”

“Steve,” she said gently, “you did the right thing. You’re going to bring this woman home to her family, and you’re going to continue with your business as planned. You’re doing what you can. And you’re doing a good job.”

“I don’t know.”

“You are.”

He sighed, rested his forehead against hers. “Do you mind if I stay here tonight?”

Peggy tilted her chin up, caught his lips with hers. “Not at all. Come on, you need some rest.”

Steve fell asleep faster than she’d seen in the last week, curled into her side and looking rather angelic. He cared so deeply about his neighbors, the people he was trying to protect—of course any mistake would have him second guessing himself, and of course the pressure got to him. She wished she’d seen it sooner, wished she’d been more familiar with the signs of it. 

His head was pressed against her hip and he was snoring lightly when she pulled out her phone to check the message, reading slowly to decode it as she went. 

_Found nothing._

_Stationed where?_

_V Bridge only._

She frowned. They’d checked the fastest route - Jersey, through Staten Island, straight into Brooklyn - but this was Steve. He’d been avoiding getting caught with this for years. He wouldn't be obvious about it. _Try every way in. Through Mhtn?,_ she tapped out, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, _N_ _ew cover._

_Neg. ICE best for checkpoints. Get us better intel._

_Gave what I had._

_Standby. Two weeks._

Hearing they’d be dressed up as ICE again dredged the too familiar guilt out of where she'd been suppressing it, and she deleted the conversation, plugged her phone in, and struggled to put it out of her mind. She was keeping the guns off the street. She was keeping the drugs off the street. She was driving Steve into a panic when he was only trying to help his people.

Even if his help included murdering anyone that got in his way. Which, she knew, would include her whenever he learned the truth.

Steve put his arm over her lap, trusting even in his sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are starting to get exciting!


	11. Chapter 11

“Hope you told ‘em they don’t owe us anything,” Steve said from the corner of his couch. Peggy was reclining on the other end, her ankles crossed on his lap where he absently massaged the sole of her foot. She flipped through the channels on his television with the sound muted. She couldn’t hear Bucky on the other end of the call, but understood most of the conversation from Steve.

“Good. Just glad their mom’s home safe. Yeah, talk to you soon.” He hung up, stretched his arms above his head, turned to her. “You busy today?”

“Extremely,” Peggy said guilelessly. 

“I’ve got it on good authority that you’re not expected at the office, so I can’t imagine what’s taking up your schedule.”

Peggy twisted her foot, tapped her toes against his stomach. “When you tell a girl to come over wearing a dress without anything underneath, that tends to imply you have plans for her.”

Steve walked his fingers up her leg. “You know I can tell you have a bra on, right?”

"You know my tits are too big to be perky, right?”

Steve’s laugh was tinted with a proud disbelief. “God, you’re so crass. I can’t believe I used to think you were some sweet Southern girl.” 

"I am a sweet Southern girl." Peggy grinned. “The duality of woman, Steve.”

“You keep surprising me, Bet.” He lifted up the end of her dress to peak underneath. She gasped, smoothed the cotton back down over her hips. “At least you can partially follow instructions.”

“Are you going to tease me all day?”

“Nah, just most of it.” He stood, held out a hand for her. “Want to go for a walk? I thought I’d show you around. Give you the Steve Rogers tour of the neighborhood.”

Peggy raised her eyebrows as he helped her up. “Is it windy?”

“How should I know? Put your shoes on.”

She went to the bathroom, grabbed her purse. He joined her by the door with a backpack slung over his shoulder.

They walked leisurely, Steve waving to, or chatting with most of the people they passed. He brought them under an overpass, past a police station - which he seemed far too comfortable around considering he was the neighborhood's resident criminal - and to a park that was separated from New York Bay by two roads and a steep drop.

"This is a nice view," she said, swinging their hands lightly between them. “Where’s the Statue of Liberty?”

“We’re at the wrong angle for it, but you can get a nice glimpse between the streets further downtown, if you want me to take you there sometime. Battery Park in Manhattan's nice, too.”

“Is it worth it to visit the island itself?”

“If you’d like to see it up close, sure.”

“We can make a date of it.” 

“It’s a date,” he murmured. They were in an empty section of the park, a few trees scattered across the lawn. He pressed her toward one until her back hit the jagged bark, the sharpness bringing the feeling of him slotting against her into focus. “I come to this spot a lot.”

Peggy’s leg wrapped around his. She looked around, checking that there was no one around. “With other girls?”

“No. What do you see?”

“You, mostly. Looking like you’re planning something.” 

Steve’s grin was wide, toothy, ominous. “Let me get out of your way, then.” He knelt down, guided her leg over his shoulder, her skirt lifted enough that she could feel the breeze, feel his eyes on her before he kissed up her thigh. “What do you see now?”

“A public indecency charge.”

“Betty,” Steve warned, teeth pulling at her skin, her short trimmed hair. She gasped.

“I see water. Land separated by a channel. A ferry.”

“Good.” His tongue dragged over her, his head beneath her dress. “On the right is New Jersey. The left is Staten Island.”

“Okay.” She tilted her hips forward, wanting more than a tease. 

“Years ago, the city tried to better connect all the boroughs. There was supposed to be a subway line from that point you see, right there,” he bit down on her labia again, less gently this time, and the breath was pulled from her chest. She gripped his shoulder that didn’t have her leg draped over it, “to here.”

“But they didn’t?”

“They started, before deciding it was too expensive. So the people of Staten Island continue to suffer, because the city couldn’t get its shit together.”

Steve buried his face in her, the heat of him everywhere, chin pressing against her, nose brushing her clit, mouth open. 

"We're in public,” she pointed out, despite knowing she’d be annoyed if he stopped, “in broad daylight.”

“Hm.”

A noise slipped out of her mouth and she brought her hand to it, shoving her knuckles against her teeth to try and stifle anything else. Just as she could feel herself getting closer, feel her muscles tightening, clenching around his tongue as it pushed into her, he stopped, wiped his mouth on the underside of her dress and helped her leg off of his shoulder. 

“ _ Steve _ ,” she whined, knocking her head back against the tree.

“What? We’re in public.” 

God, she wanted to punch that smug bastard. She wanted to do many, many, things to him.

Peggy settled on pulling him into a kiss, chasing the taste of herself. “Did you bring me here just for your exhibitionist tendencies?”

“Mine and yours.” He grinned. “And for that story. It's another reminder that governments rarely work for their constituents’ best interests.”

“And that’s where you come in.”

“And that’s where I come in.”

“That’s not the only thing I’m going to learn today, is it?”

Steve adjusted her skirt for her so it sat properly on her legs, adjusted his backpack, pecked her lips. “Nope. Got some more people to introduce you to.”

They caught a bus and took it across town, Peggy keeping her thighs pressed together with her purse on her lap; no need to accidentally show anything off. If she knew they were going out today, she’d have worn a dress a little longer than the one she’d put on specifically to tease Steve with. 

Store signs changed languages as the bus took them to higher avenues, first to Cantonese, another block of English, then everything switched to Hebrew. The stores they passed had ornate menorahs in the windows, pewter kiddush cups, twin crystal candle holders, and enough kosher grocers and butchers and bakeries to keep all of Brooklyn fed. “A lot of the Chasidim in New York live around here,” Steve explained. He reached over her to tug on the stop-request string above the window.

When they were off the bus, she walked closer to his side, unnerved by the eyes on her. Her job was to blend in, and she was sticking out like a sore thumb in her yellow floral sundress that didn't reach her knees or cover her shoulders. 

Steve held the door open to a deli with a few Hebrew letters in the name, and while she wasn’t phenomenal when it came to reading it, she managed to sound out the letters until she recognized part of it was the German word for  _ lord. _

Someone else from the Network, she assumed, with a name like that.

The place was packed on the inside with hungry people pulling numbers, and an air conditioner blasting to keep them and the food cool. Steve pulled them through the crowd and straight through the doorway into the back. 

She could see down a hallway to the steel tables and industrial sized refrigerators of the kitchen, the machinery down, feel the heat emanating toward them from where the cooks were shuffling around to boil the bagels and bake the bread.

Steve knocked on a door that was halfway down the hall. The man who opened had a strict, chiseled jaw, held his shoulders square. He seemed older than Steve, but not by too much—he was in his early forties or later thirties, if she had to guess.

He wasn’t in the same black suit and hat that she’d seen the Chasidic men wearing, but he was dressed to the nines regardless in a grey jacket and white buttoned shirt. He had a hint of a German accent. “Steve.”

“Erik.” Steve dropped his shoulder to let the backpack slide down, and pulled a package from the main zippered pocket, the size of a generous wad of cash. 

Erik took the money, weighing it in his hands before he nodded. “Pleasure doing business with you as always. Kid out front’s got your lunch.” 

“Enough for the both of us?”

“Should be.” 

“I’ve got a couple questions, before we go.”

“Do you mind giving us a moment?” Erik smiled politely at Peggy, looking into her eyes and nothing else. He looked like a killer, but he wasn’t undressing her in his mind. Being addressed instead of discussed was something novel. 

Steve nodded his approval. “Not at all," she said, "Nice to meet you,” and stepped into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind her. She clasped her hands together while she waited. There was a girl sitting on a box before the entryway to the kitchen, a fan blowing her long dark hair back every time it twisted her way.

Peggy took the time to pull out her own phone, and opened a message from Jack she'd received hours ago.

_ Intel? _

There was only so long she could put it off. As soon as the Agency did the next sweep of all trucks going in and out of Brooklyn, she’d be done with the case, anyway. 

She bit the skin on the inside of her cheek.

_ Day before trucks _ , she replied. Doing it the same day was too risky, but that gave her time to make sure it was up to date, enjoy some more time with Steve, plan a way to make sure she was at her flat without him the morning of the hand off.

Steve came out after five minutes, and she dropped her mobile back in her purse. He didn’t look upset, which meant he’d only been doing his usual business and nothing special. “Hey, Wanda,” he said, taking Peggy’s hand and looking down the hall.

The girl looked up at him and blushed lightly. “Hey, Steve.” She had an accent, too, but it was further East than Erik’s, despite having the same shape to her chin and the same color eyes. 

Back in the front of the shop, behind the counter was a boy of about the same age - neither seemed quite old enough to drink, but likely were over eighteen - whipping up sandwiches and bagels at record speed, as if he’d been doing it since he could walk. 

When he saw Steve emerging from the back, he stopped what he was doing, much to a customer’s dismay, and grabbed a package from the fridge. “Got all your favorites in there, sir,” he said with a big smile, and Steve smiled back, thanked him, and put it in his backpack as they left. 

The sun painted Steve’s hair golden on the way to Greenwood Cemetery, and she wondered if his pale skin would freckle from the exposure. “Erik runs the best kosher deli in the city.” 

“It seemed expensive,” she joked.

Steve laughed, which was good; she’d been worried he’d be upset with her noticing the exchange of money.

They found a secluded spot in the park, on a patch of grass next to a grand stone mausoleum, half covered in moss. There weren’t any trees around, but the graves, statues, and other stones lent them a comfortable privacy. 

He handed her the package of food, and fished a red and white checkered blanket out of the bottom of the bag. He fanned it out and they sat together, unwrapping their picnic. 

“Is that not the best bagel you’ve ever had?” Steve asked around a bite, and Peggy chewed, moaned happily. She hadn’t even heard of an egg bagel before, but now she was quite sure she wasn't ever going to eat anything else.

“It’s delicious,” she agreed, mouth full, too engrossed to care about manners.

“They’ve got the freshest Nova Scotia lox there, too, and house-made cream cheese. Nothing beats it.” 

There was a large bottle of lemonade with beet juice that had been wrapped with their food, and they passed it back and forth as the sun peaked in the sky, the bottle sweating and growing warmer by the minute. 

“I wanted to talk to you,” Steve said, holding Peggy to his chest, their legs both stretched out.

“About?”

“My job. The whole organization. There’s a lot you still don’t know, so I’m hoping to fill in a few details.” 

She tilted her head back on his shoulder. She couldn’t seem too eager. And part of her didn’t want to know. “You know I trust you, Steve. You don’t need to tell me.”

“I know.” He kissed her temple. “I want to. You’re a part of this, now. I know that some of it, out of context, doesn’t look great.”

“Like the drugs?”

“Mmhm.” He fingered the edge of her dress and she looked up at the clear blue of the sky, soaking in how much she enjoyed his company. How little time she had left to enjoy it.

“I’m listening.”

Steve pressed another gentle kiss below her ear. “Bringing drugs in is the biggest money makers we’ve got. It’s not something I was excited about getting into, but,” he sighed, “it’s a necessary evil.”

“I don’t see how it’s necessary,” Peggy said, frowning, glad for the space to be unhappy, to demand an explanation.

“Let’s say there’s a cop that doesn’t have the right outlook on what protecting his community means. We call in a tip, say there’s X amount of cocaine, let him get credit for the pick up, but make sure there’s not enough. Then plant the rest on him. Just like that, he’s no longer a problem.”

“Oh,” Peggy said, biting her lip.

“And your landlord? He’s off getting high most of the time. Now, I’m not proud of getting him hooked, but he’s not pushing people out of their homes anymore with all the cruel but unfortunately legal price raises.”

She remembered Fran mentioning how worthless the landlord was. And how expensive the building was now. Betty likely wouldn’t have been able to afford it, had Steve not gotten involved.

“And yeah, we sell the rest. Some to other organizations. A lot to CEOs, business execs. A fair amount to addicts, sure. But their only other option is... you know, on the street they’re getting shit that’s laced with fentanyl and killing them. So they can do that, or go into withdrawal, which can kill them just as easily.” His hand flattened on her leg over her dress. “It’s not all black and white. And then that money we make, we can use to buy the politicians that can make safe consumption spaces for them, with an on call doctor, or give off the books money to the people who are actually doing something about the issues driving these people to addiction.”

Peggy hated how much she understood his reasoning, hated how desperate he was for her to understand him. “It does make sense. The money helps your community.”

“Right. We need money to do good. Force and threats only go so far, and only work for certain problems.” Steve pulled up the skirt of her dress.

“What about the guns? You can’t possibly keep all those for yourself.”

“We started importing weapons for the Russians when there were too many eyes on them. Sometimes we work with Japanese, but they tend to keep to themselves. The Mafia families are the same, a bit more tight knit.”

“What happens when you get into, like, turf wars?”

“There’s a lot of snapping and songs about rumbles.”

Peggy laughed and flicked his hand. “You think you’re so funny.”

Steve chuckled, low, breath tickling her ear. “We’re all pretty content with what we have. And when there are discrepancies about whose territory starts where, there’s usually an amount of civility to it. We all want to get out of it with limited bloodshed. Well, on our side anyway.” He dragged his teeth over her earlobe. “But I’m of the belief it’s best to ruffle as few feathers as I can. And the Network’s helped with that, put me in a good position for it."

He finished pulling her dress up, dropped it to her hip, and she shivered despite the summer heat hanging in the air, the warmth of his hand over her and his chest behind her. 

“Can I ask about the Network?” she asked, her voice unsteady. She didn’t hear anyone coming but that didn’t stop the adrenaline pulsing through her at being exposed. She was still wet from his mouth earlier that morning, and as soon as he was touching her, his fingers were slick.

“What about it?” 

“What _is_ it?”

“An agreement. More or less. We can get more done when we work together.”

“And you’re at—” He pushed two fingers inside her and her mouth fell open for a moment, distracting her from the question. “You’re… the top of it?”

“Exactly.” 

“Fuck,” Peggy breathed.

“Gets you going, huh?” Steve laughed, too full of himself entirely.

“Mm. Your fingers.”

“What, these?” He moved them, rubbed up against her from the inside and she was keening, but it wasn’t enough.

Peggy pushed his hand away and he moved obligingly, letting her twist on her knees until their mouths collided, her tongue forceful against his. She unbuckled his belt, fumbling a few times before she got it open, gave his chest a little shove when they were free. “Lie back.”

“Yeah?” Steve asked, smirking as if he wasn’t hard enough in his jeans to strain the seams.

She undid the button, zip, pulled him out and stroked him as he rested on his back, propped the empty backpack under his head. “Yes,” Peggy hissed, straddling him, moving closer until she could sink onto him, bottom out with a puff of breath, a soft “ _ Oh _ ,” from Steve, her hands curling in his shirt to steady herself, and though her dress obscured what they were doing, the way she was moving, the slow jerks of Steve’s hips up into her, her resulting gasps all gave them away.

Peggy’s thighs burned with the effort of riding him, sweat beading on her forehead and her waist under Steve’s hands that were as hot and needy as he was inside of her, and she couldn’t look away from him, from how beautiful he was, from every open mouthed noise he made, from how languid he was allowing her to be when they were out in the open. 

Steve’s bright eyes closed as he came. She was only disappointed for the minute it took for him to recover enough of himself to say, “Come here,” and tug Peggy up his chest. 

They rearranged, Peggy settled over his mouth, knees on either side of his head. Steve gazed up at her as if he hadn’t eaten in a week.

It was slow at first, the jostling of him tucking his soft cock back into his jeans distracting the both of them, but once his hands found the outside of her thighs, and once she pulled her dress up so she could watch him and spread her legs wider to lower himself to his lips, he found his rhythm, his enthusiasm, catching everything that dripped out of her as she tugged his hair to steady herself.

She shuddered above him and ruining his hair as she found her own climax, and then Peggy found herself laughing, settling back on the blanket. The muscles in her thighs were shaky from the strain. Christ, she’d have to start going for runs again if this was going to be a normal occurrence.

“The laughter doesn’t make me confident that that was good for you,” Steve said, laughing just as giddily. He licked his lips as he sat, then wiped his chin with the back of his hand.

“It was good,” Peggy promised, wiping the sweat from her forehead. “I’ve never done that.”

“Been on top?”

“Been in public.” She pulled her hair off the back of her damp neck, tying it up in a loose bun. 

Steve rubbed at his jaw. The sight made her want to jump him again. Peggy started to pack up their trash instead, stood to stretch out her legs, get them functioning while she searched for a trash bin. 

“Can I ask you something, Bet?”

“Anything.”

“Why the bleach blonde? Clearly you’re a brunette.”

“I was.” She shrugged, walking back over to the blanket and relaxing onto her side next to him. Peggy tucked a shorter curl back behind her ear where it refused to stay, frizzy from the humidity, the sweat under her hair. “I wanted a change. I started doing it years ago.”

“You curl it yourself?”

“Yeah,” Peggy said. Steve followed her down, facing her on his side on the blanket as well.

“You want to get it professionally done? You could get it permed if you’re attached to the curls, but I’ve seen the way your hair looks when you let it air dry. It’s pretty like that, the natural waves.” Steve reached out, fixed the same curl as it fell out of place again. “I don’t care how you look, but I want you to be happy with.”

“Who says I’m not?”

“You’ve been fiddling with your hair more and more lately. Putting it up, taking longer with it in the mornings than you used to when I was taking you to the docks.” He gave her a soft smile. “There are some nice salons in the neighborhood.”

She hummed. “Getting it redone might be nice, actually.”

“Okay,” Steve said. “I’ll set it up.” 

“Okay.” Peggy closed her eyes, breathing in the moment - the sunshine, the easy grins, the Steve who cared about her - while it lasted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> \- Some familiar faces in this chapter! mixing the X-Men movies and MCU for my own personal gain and nothing else, because we were robbed of a Jewish Wanda and Pietro (and don't even get me started on two canonically Jewish characters volunteering to work with a nazi organization in AoU)
> 
> \- Erik Lehnsherr is an alias, apparently, but I'm guessing Magneto wouldn't use his real name for some shady business dealings, anyway. (Lehnsherr means "Liege lord" in German, also!) For this story, there's not a "Jewish Mob" or anything, but that doesn't mean the community leaders aren't aware of everything going on around them, so I see Erik as being the guy who is able to be in charge of keeping all that stuff out of their neighborhood/community by keeping in touch with the other groups in the areas surrounding them. 
> 
> \- Just for reference: Chasidic/Hasidic Jews are a subset of Orthodox Judaism (the most religious kind), which tends to be a little more conservative and tight knit in their communities, and both the men and the women dress very conservatively. Peggy getting stares is likely because they're really deep in the community, and it's rare for those people to see someone without their arms and legs covered to the extent of what Peggy's wearing. 
> 
> \- For a mental map of their day, they start in Sunset Park where Steve's apartment is/most of the story takes place, go to Owl's Head Park at the top of Bay Ridge, go a little north, cross town to Borough Park, and then up to Greenwood Cemetery for the picnic


	12. Chapter 12

Peggy stretched as she shifted into wakefulness, muscles aching in the delicious well-used way that was reminiscent of a punishing run.

"Good morning," Steve said, capturing her arm to press a soft kiss to the faint red line around her wrist. "How do you feel?"

"As if I was thoroughly fucked last night." She pressed herself against the line of his body, unsurprised to find him hard on her hip. Steve was insatiable whenever they were in each other’s space. And, quite frankly, every other time, too. "Far too exhausted for another round this morning."

"I don't need you to do any work," he promised, rubbing against her shamelessly.

"I need to go home to get dressed or I'll be late."

"You can be late." 

Peggy moved to the end of Steve’s bed and pulled on her underwear once she'd uncovered them from a pile of clothes. "My boss gets cranky when I don’t bring him his coffee on time. And he’s horribly strict about punctuality.”

"I hear he's nice to the employees he likes." 

"I hear he ties up his secretary when the mood strikes."

Steve threw his head back with a laugh, his hand idly stroking himself. "I hear she likes it, the naughty secretary."

She was halfway through buttoning her blouse when he tugged her back onto the bed. “Steve,” she laughed, “I really have to go.” 

“Do you? Why don’t you wear my clothes to work?”

“That’s hardly professional.” She was lying down, looking up at him, and he grinned.

“Blow me first?”

“Blow yourself.” She grabbed her purse from where it was sitting on his dresser, checked she had her keys, wallet, and phone. “I’ll see you soon.”

Peggy didn’t have the time or freedom for a handoff at the library where they’d met the last time, months before, so they’d arranged for Jack to come by her flat. It was messy, and even being their best bet it presented all sorts of logistical nightmares: should she leave her door unlocked? Should he be able to walk right in? Knocking might get unwanted attention from her neighbors. Letting himself in was more suspicious if someone was watching.

Once home, she double and triple checked the information in her notebook after pulling it out from beneath the floorboards. She hadn’t written anything about the day they’d gone for the picnic. The man and his kids at the deli seemed too outside of everything, not an ally in the same way as the Russians, not a point she wanted the Agency to put pressure on. She hadn’t put Clint’s name or address. 

She sealed the journal in a padded envelope, addressed it.

There was a knock on the door. Peggy took a second to remind herself that this was the right decision.

Jack didn’t fit correctly where he stood in the hallway, the backdrop of this building too jagged behind him as if he’d been shoddily photoshopped into it. The expression on his face was too charming. Too Manhattan for this Brooklyn neighborhood. Too fake for a place that was starting to feel real.

“Hi,” he started, and she schooled herself to a neutral curiosity, blank confusion, as he spoke, “I think some of my mail’s been getting sent here?”

Peggy ushered him inside, grabbed the envelope from the table for him. “I threw out some of the flyers, but this seemed important." She handed it over. 

He eyed her wrist, still rubbed raw from Steve's tie. He snickered. “Get your fun in now,” he muttered, and she crossed her arms, hiding any incriminating evidence.

“I have to get to work.”

“I’m sure you do.”

He thanked her again for holding his mail in a louder voice that was almost too obvious, and left with the package. Christ, it was no wonder the American Agency had such a hard time, if Jack was one of the best they had.

Peggy drank half of her coffee on the way to the office, hoping it would take the edge off of the dread she felt.

Rather unhelpfully, it seemed to give the dread tap shoes. 

Steve was on the phone when she came in, took his coffee with a small smile, listened to whoever was droning on the other line with a distant expression on his face. She sat at her desk, following the regular routine until he hung up with a quick, "Thanks."

"I've gotta go. Keep up the good work,” he said to her, squeezed her shoulder as he left, too busy to drop her a kiss.

The day was slow while Steve took care of business. She cleaned up at the end of the day, clearing his empty cup from his desk, the familiar creak of old wood under the rug overlapping with the sound of Bucky cutting a key for a customer in the front of the store. 

“Mind helping me with something?” he asked as she came out. He twirled his ring of keys and led her out the front door. “I gotta get something from the basement.”

She’d only ever glimpsed the basement through the metal doors on the street, and disguised her excitement with a polite acquiescence as if she'd prefer to go home. Part of her had been wondering if there was anything down there, if that was where they kept their shipments and brought it all in on an odd enough schedule that they somehow avoided detection.

He opened up the hatch on the sidewalk, let Peggy come down with him. The space was cramped with cardboard boxes stacked on old cracking tile, and a single light in the center of the room that swung, dancing shadows into the corners of the room. The space was half the size of the above office, about the depth of where the storefront ended. Bucky worked, moving things around with an ease that made Peggy suspect Steve had asked Bucky to engage her with this, to make her feel useful, since he himself hadn’t been around for the day.

“Why’s it so tiny down here?” she asked, grabbing the box that he pointed to, and slowly carrying it up the stairs as if it was too heavy for her. The metal pieces inside clanged against each other with every steep step she took.

“There was some foundational problem." Bucky carried a box of heavy parts in his arm with impeccable balance. He kicked the hatch shut once on the street. “They had to fill it with concrete.”

There went that idea.

Peggy went to Steve’s flat after getting a few more boxes into the store with Bucky. She knocked, waited. There were voices inside, low words she couldn’t make out.

Morita opened the door, giving her a tight lipped smile. “Betty,” he said, Falsworth following him out into the hall. Steve came into the doorway, tiredness etched into his smile.

“Hey.”

“Hi.” She rocked back on her heels. “Can I come in?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” Steve pulled her into his arms when the door was shut. 

“Long day?”

“Unfortunately. Another hiccup. But we’re working on it.”

Peggy kissed his cheek. “Want to talk about it over Indian food?”

His hold on her tightened, as if he could will the comfort to come faster, squeeze relaxation out of her to absorb it himself. She rubbed his back as if that might help the process. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “It’s more with immigration. I’m having my guys look into it.”

They ate, and wound up in Steve’s bed while watching videos on his tablet, Peggy curled into his side with his arm around her. 

Knowing that the Agency was going through the intel she’d given them made it hard for her to pretend everything was fine. Each second in his bed was another second of damage that she’d done to his organization. To the Network. And the following day, they’d go through the trucks, have the proof that they needed once the supplies were coming into Brooklyn to connect Steve to everything.

He laid her down on the bed that night with an inscrutable gaze, spread her out, covered every inch of her with his mouth, his foul mood translating to slow and steady, every point they connected an ache of heat. She gripped his biceps as he mouthed at the tendon between her neck and shoulder, and she took every inch of him willingly, the groans and the stuttering breaths, the way his hands tightened in the sheets, curled in her hair, took and took and took as he kept her from the friction she needed as he finished, held her open and watched his mess drip out of her with his breath hot and heavy on her thighs.

“Steve, please,” she begged, nearing an orgasm that she’d been chasing for an hour against his lips, but he let up like he’d done every time before, kissed up her body, further and further from where she needed him. Her hands were loose on the pillow above her head with strict instruction to not move them. They twitched with the effort of holding still.

“Please, what?”

“Let me **—** ”

“No,” he murmured against her stomach. He slid his tongue up to her chest, dragged over her nipples, teasing while she cooled off. 

“I’ll do anything.”

His smirk was filled with a dark humor as he lifted his head to look at her. “Yeah? What’ll you do, Betty?”

She didn’t shy away from meeting his eyes. “Whatever you want.” 

Steve’s lips found hers, and his hand found her clit. She’d been expecting him to have her fulfill a new desire with her offer. Instead, his fingers were gentle, pushing her through a shaking climax, eyes clenched so tight from being on edge for so long that she felt tears welling up from the relief.

He shut the light off and curled around her when their breathing had calmed to the same steady rhythm. 

“Goodnight,” he said against her hair. She stared at the wall, knowing sleep wouldn’t come for her anytime soon.

“Goodnight.”

Steve was eerily quiet in the morning, less handsy than she was expecting, still in the same mood from the night before, the stress of dealing with his neighbor’s immigration case getting to him. She didn’t know how to help other than making him breakfast, frying eggs as she minded her mobile, waiting for a text from Jack or Phillips. 

“What’s on the agenda today?” she asked at the table, around a piece of toast.

“Nothing too exciting,” he said, shaking his head as he texted someone. “I’ll probably be out again today, I have a few meetings.”

“Anything you want me at?” It would be difficult if she needed to find an excuse to leave while with him, but before she got far into planning any potential escape, Steve shook his head once more.

“This might be too dangerous for you.”

They finished eating in silence. Steve didn’t look up from his phone, jaw tight with nerves that she could understand, that she felt for a different reason. 

Peggy found every excuse to stay longer that morning, loathe to leave when she knew it would be the last time she did. She followed him into the shower and he didn’t let her step fully under the water before he was slamming her against the tiled wall, kicking her legs apart, pushing into her from behind, his hand around her hip and holding her in place.

It was rough and merciless, desperation dripping off the both of them, and she came with a shout as he bit down hard on her neck. 

By the time Peggy was at the office, she was exhausted physically and emotionally. Bucky was sitting at Steve’s desk, feet up on his desk as he played a game on his phone. 

“Why aren’t you manning the front?” Peggy asked, giving him Steve's coffee and sitting at her desk. 

“Security,” Bucky said, glancing to the doorway and then over to her. “Steve said it could get dangerous today.”

Peggy frowned. “Good thing you’re here, then.” 

She spent extra time memorizing files, figuring Bucky wouldn’t realize she was going slower than her typical typing speed, though the fact that he was there meant she couldn’t write down more from what she suspected was the real financial account of the many she was tasked with handling.

Steve didn’t stop by. She couldn't have said a goodbye, even if he had, but it would have been nice to see him once more.

Her flat was waiting when she got home. Peggy made the bed, got rid of any food from the fridge that would spoil, put the nail polish of Betty’s that she was starting to grow fond of into the purse she’d be taking with her. She had on a blouse she’d also grown partial to, and planned on taking Betty’s trench coat with her back to London.

Her phone rang. This was it. “Hello?”

Jack, his voice labored as if he was speed walking, didn't bother with a greeting. “We found nothing.”

Her heart dropped into her stomach. “Are you sure? What did you check?”

“Every bridge, every tunnel, even the fucking Staten Island ferry. You sure there was a delivery today?”

“Positive.” Peggy pushed a hand through her damned curls. 

“Great. So how the fuck is he getting his supplies to Brooklyn? Nothing you gave us in your little diary is useful. What am I supposed to do, contact the Russians for a friendly chat? Jesus, Carter, how fucking useless **—** ”

“I don’t know,” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down. If she was going to be here longer, she couldn’t blow her cover now. “I thought he’d go through Manhattan. What about Queens? Did you try **—** ”

“We did everything. Spent a fortune on it, too. Half the Agency was out today. All those American taxpayer dollars gone thanks to you.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose. Fuck. “Can you check the docks? I can tell you how to get to where his shipments are placed.”

Jack huffed. “Sure, like a shipping container full of illegal shit is gonna do anything. The whole point of this is the fact that it’s coming into Brooklyn, and that the driver knows where to bring it.”

“What about the club? Is there anything there?”

“Yeah. There’s a guy who owns it. His name’s Grant James. We reached out to him already as part of the ICE cover, and he’s a real guy, no connection to Rogers or the organization. Air tight background.”

They must have found someone with the name and paid him off. Or made up the entire identity. “There's something we’re missing. Something you didn't check.”

Jack snorted. “We have what you told us. You figure it out. And do it soon, Phillips is gonna pull you off the case.”

Peggy hung up and threw her phone on the couch in a fit of frustration. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, slowed her breathing until her anger at Jack, at the Agency, was shallow, easier to ignore. She could figure this out. 

There were three things she didn’t know: How he brought his supplies in, where he kept his supplies, what the Network truly was, other than a loose alliance.

There were six main places that might have the answer: His apartment, his office, his club, the house, the docks, the warehouse. She’d seen every surface of his home and other than embarrassing childhood photos he could blackmail Bucky with, it was clean. The house where he’d met Natasha was empty, other than that closet she hadn’t had a chance to explore, but getting in with Russian eyes on it wouldn't be easy, as they didn't have reason to trust her like Steve's people did. She’d seen the club and how the secret offices from the back room had been turned into shelves. Jack had ruled out the docks as a place to intercept, and she knew there wasn’t anything else illicit going on there **—** at least, not in conjunction with Steve’s organization. 

Peggy was sure she'd explored every inch of his office, other than the basement, which she now knew couldn’t even comfortably hold one shipping container’s worth of goods, if that. 

The elusive warehouse was somewhere in the neighborhood, but they'd have cleaned it out after the supposed ICE checkpoints that day, even if she knew where it was.

It was possible they had the trucks take the items to a warehouse in New Jersey and then drive them into the city the next day, but Peggy knew Steve. He wouldn’t want his supplies out of his sight for that long. He was possessive of his things and secrets.

Secrets he might keep in the leather bound journal she’d spotted him writing in a few times.

He never took it out of the office. 

If Steve was busy with an important, dangerous meeting tonight, he’d want all of his close crew with him. It was the best opening she could hope for. Peggy had counted three security cameras in the storefront, and they were unavoidable, but if she was getting pulled off the case soon, what did it matter? She'd even prepare a contingency plan in case she was caught in the act. 

Peggy walked over the groan of the floorboards where her own journal used to be, to dig out lingerie from her dresser that she’d been meaning to show off to Steve. She pulled her coat on after with nothing else between. 

If Steve was there, that should buy her time to think up a lie.

She slipped into the store in the dark, navigating the path around the boxes she and Bucky had placed that day, and picked the lock to the back office, heart pounding. How long did she have before someone stopped by? How long did she have to solve this before she was contacted by the Agency and told to leave? 

In the quiet of the night the grumble of the subway was loud beneath the building in a way she hadn’t heard before. She made it fade into background noise, too busy to think about it as she shut the door, used her phone’s flashlight to guide her to the desk. Peggy knelt down and used the bent bobby pins she used on the door locks to work the drawer open, her throat tightening. Whatever she found, there was no going back.

If the journal was there, she’d have to leave with it as quickly as she could. 

If the journal wasn't there, it wouldn’t be safe to stay.

The lock gave. She pulled it open. There were two pencils and a paperclip.

She swore.

Peggy searched the rest of the desk, every other drawer. Blood pumped in her ears as she went to look through her own desk, then to one of the filing cabinets Steve used frequently. More nothing. Where else could it possibly be, if it wasn’t here and wasn’t with Steve?

She should leave. She needed to leave. Steve wasn’t an idiot. He’d know someone had been there the next morning. Hell, he might be on his way.

Her hands balled into fists, nails covered in chipping polish pressing into her palms, the sharpness clearing her head with the steady _whoosh_ of the subway. 

It was different than what she’d heard when she first came in. 

It was quieter, too. She looked down at the floor, at the rug, trying to remember if the sound came from somewhere specific, walked carefully forward until...

_There_. A creak. The sound of flooring with less support, same as she’d heard in her flat. The same that she’d heard every day in the office since she started.

Peggy pulled the rug back, directing the flashlight at the grains in the wood floor, fingers searching for something that suggested Steve regularly pried up the floorboards to hide something **—** scratches, grooves, until she found it. A knot in the wood with a divot that was big enough to get two thick fingers in with a good grip. Inside, something plastic, cooler than the wood. She made sure to hold the tiny ledge of wood securely, pressed in the button.

She almost fell forward as the trapdoor dropped on a hidden hinge, only managing to keep herself steady by sacrificing her phone for a quick grip on the corner of Steve’s desk with gritted teeth, clenched abs. Peggy even managed to catch the momentum and keep the door from slamming open, following it down until it hung silently.

Scrambling for her phone, she shone the light down into the dark void. 

There was a square of space just enough to fit someone Dugan’s size, a ladder that went straight down. 

A dim light flashed at the very bottom of the vertical passage, giving her an idea of the depth. It appeared to go further underground than the subway line.

She couldn’t explore the passage, not with the light meaning the room below might be occupied, not without backup, not without her gun in her hand, not in the low heels and lingerie and nothing else. Peggy might rush headlong into danger, but she didn’t have a death wish.

She did, however, have a minute to think as she pulled the door back into place, the soft _pop_ of the plastic piece latching shut, the rush of thoughts loud in her head:

Steve, seeming to come and go without leaving his office. The club’s value being in what lay beneath. The draw in controlling basement renovations to an inconspicuous residential building.

Being fucked against a tree while Steve told her about the transit tunnel that the government hadn’t been able to finish, _And that’s where I come in_. 

_Tunnels._ They were using bloody tunnels.

The Network suddenly made sense; every mob in the city would want a part of an untraceable way to bring goods in and out of Brooklyn, a place to store them beneath the city. 

And Steve controlled access. That would make him the most powerful man in New York.

And here she was, kneeling on the floor of his office in knickers and a trench coat, having uncovered - both literally and figuratively, she thought, with a twinge of hysteria, the rug rumpled around her - the entrance to his empire. She needed to text the agency. She needed to get to HQ. She needed to decide, quickly, whether she wanted to upturn Steve’s entire organization by revealing its foundation.

The overhead light flickered on. Peggy froze. 

Behind her, the safety of a gun clicked off. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the cliffhanger ;)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the wait after that cliffhanger!

“Fancy meeting you here,” Steve said, and Peggy's fingers curled around the hard rubber case of her phone. 

"Steve," she said, all innocence, turning around to stare down the barrel of his gun. She was still on her knees on the floor. She wondered if she’d be able to send a text to the Agency without him noticing, without looking down. A quick SOS to Jack would do the trick. “I was hoping you’d show up.”

“Were you?” He motioned with the gun to the swath of open floor next to her. “Slide your phone over there.”

Damn it. 

She did. 

The mobile splintered into pieces as he shot it.

Peggy jumped. She was used to the sound of bullets in confined spaces, but Betty wasn’t, and her best chance at getting out of this alive was convincing him she was still just Betty Carver. She pushed herself to her feet and he pointed the gun at her again. His face was hard in a way she hadn’t seen in months. 

“What are you doing here?”

She looked to what was left of the phone, swallowed, infused her voice with a quiver. “I wanted to see you, and you weren’t home, so I came by.”

“And you broke in.”

“Bucky gave me a key." It was the kind of lie that he could prove with a quick call or a quick text, which might be enough of a distraction for her to escape. 

Steve ran his tongue over his teeth. “Why are you on the floor?”

“I heard a noise,” Peggy said, frowning delicately as she looked down at the closed hatch. “Is there someone in the basement?”

"I think you're hearing things." Steve shut the door and locked it behind him. If she had contacted someone, that would buy him a few seconds. And if she tried to get away, that would lose her a few seconds.

A smart move for Steve. A bad sign for Peggy.

He walked around her, kicking the rug back into place, and sat in his desk chair. "Why were you looking for me?"

"To cheer you up." Peggy bit her lip, a sweet Betty smile pulling at her mouth. "I know you've had a busy couple of days and thought you could use some stress relief."

He set the gun down on the desk, within easy reach of his hand. "Is that why you're not wearing anything under that coat?"

"I'd never leave the house in nothing but my coat," Peggy said and added a nervous Betty laugh.

"You'd better take it off before I decide to pick up the gun again."

"You certainly enjoy ordering me around, don’t you?" 

"Not as much as you seem to enjoy it."

"I'm not enjoying it at all," she teased, and started working open the buttons, taking in the careful mask of disinterest on his face, his dark eyes not appreciating her in the way she was used to. 

"I don't believe that for a second." Steve leaned on the desk, pressed his fingertips together. "So, what's with this sexy, dumb blonde act? Was that supposed to entice me?"

Her fingers paused. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me.” He lifted the gun, motioned at her coat. “I didn’t tell you to stop, did I?”

She pulled it off her shoulders with a playful eye roll, revealing the lace and silk lingerie she had on beneath that was barely holding her chest back, the knickers not leaving much to the imagination. “I don’t know whether to take that as a compliment or not.” 

“Coat on the chair,” Steve instructed. “You didn’t give me an answer.”

She took her time to bend over, giving him a good view of her ass as she did. “I’m trying to decide whether it’s better to argue I’m a dumb blonde and not whatever you think I am, or to be annoyed you’d even call me that in the first place.” 

For all the adrenaline in her system, Peggy was oddly calm. Everything in the past seven months had been leading to this moment. The twitch of her fingers at her side was controlled, the revving of her muscles for when she needed to move. Even the dust motes in the air were in sharp focus.

Steve put the pistol down again. She didn’t track it, didn’t give any indication that she was calculating the likelihood of being able to grab it if she dove forward. She had a small gun in a hidden pocket of her purse, though it would be too obvious to go for that now. Too slow.

“The thing is, I know you’re not dumb. The person you are with me now is witty, quick. You take in everything. You hear everything. It’s like your ears are always perked up, even when you’re drunk and lounging on my lap with the guys.” 

“I guess I’m more comfortable with you now than I used to be.”

“I guess you are. Come here.” 

He pushed his chair back enough for her to straddle his lap once she came over, like she did every time he sat here. It was good. It was a return to their normal. He looked resigned, perhaps starting to relax. “Do you like my outfit better up close?” she asked, and combed through his hair to further calm him.

“I always like you better up close,” Steve admitted, pulling her bra strap down and pressing a kiss to the top of her breast. He raked his nails along her spine. “Arms around my neck, gorgeous.”

She did as asked. “Talk to me, sweetheart. I know you’ve been tired. What can I do to make you feel better?”

“Tell me to stop answering my phone, for one,” he said with a chuckle, and slipped the other strap off her shoulder. The bodice was structured enough that it didn’t fall off, but her chest was closer to spilling out of it now. “I keep getting bad news.”

“From the Network?”

“From Fran, actually. Yesterday.”

“Is she alright?”

“She is.” Steve sucked a mark next to her cleavage, mouth hard against her, and she gasped. “She was concerned about the man leaving your apartment. Who was that, by the way?”

Peggy gave him a simple smile to accompany her simple answer. “Someone’s mail was getting sent to me. Same address, but his friend was mixing up 4th ave with 4th street.”

“I figured there’d be an explanation for that,” Steve said, and smiled back at her, and Peggy let out a breath, playing with the hair at the small of his neck. “There were other calls,” he continued, “like the one from Angie’s brother, after he connected with his ICE contact.”

She hummed, kissed at the stubble on his cheek. “What did he have to say?”

“He told me that the raids, the checkpoints on all the roads? Apparently, Immigration wasn’t responsible. It was all a federal agency cover up.”

“The feds were trying to catch you?” Betty’s brow was the picture of concern as it pulled together. She realized he was watching her quizzically when she lifted her head. “Did they get anything?”

“No, they didn’t. But the thing is, the most damning call was from Falsworth. And that one I got about an hour ago. See, he thought he recognized you when he first saw you months back. He said you looked just like someone he bumped into once while serving in the British Army. This would have been years ago, and you, Betty, were in college at the time, and this woman was a brunette who looked strikingly like you.”

Peggy’s eyes went wide unintentionally. “I’ve never even been to England,” she said with a small laugh, “and I’m definitely not the army type.”

“That’s what I said,” Steve agreed, snapping the back of her bra against her, “and we did a background check. As thorough as it gets. Still, he was sure he knew you from somewhere. So after that first call yesterday, I asked him to look into it. And sure enough, he got a picture of you. Hard to find, since you were special ops pretty early on, but there you were. And then it was easy, tracing special ops to MI6. We even managed to pull the incident report from when you evacuated that building and got yourself relocated to be the American Agency’s honeypot.”

“Steve,” Peggy said, pulling back, dropping her arms to her side in case she needed to reach for the pistol on the desk behind her, “that’s not me. You know I would never—”

He pressed a kiss to her jaw, and she sucked in a breath when she felt the cool of the gun’s mouth on her back. “Does this still turn you on?” he murmured by her neck, and she shivered, the cold metal and the heat of his breath at odds on her skin “Tell me in your real voice.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do. Come on, Miss America.” He dragged the gun up her back until it was just behind her heart. 

“This is my—”

He pulled it away, shot through the wall. This time, she genuinely startled. “I’m really sick and tired of your lies.”

“Are you going to kill me?” 

He kissed her neck, her jaw, bit on her earlobe. When he brought the gun back to her skin it burned where it touched. “That all depends on what you told your handler, _Peggy_.”

Her real name rolling off his tongue was more shocking than the gunshot.

And quite possibly the dirtiest thing he'd ever said to her.

Steve dragged the tip of the weapon up to the base of her skull.

_To hell with it_ , she thought.

Peggy dropped the accent for her own voice. “Nothing damning." It felt foreign in her mouth after so long, like walking barefoot at the end of a long day wearing heels. 

She waited for the sound of the shot tearing through her and the nothingness that would follow after a searing jolt of pain.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Steve asked, a flash passing over his expression that she couldn’t decipher.

Peggy pursed her lips, started to move from his lap, but he tightened his arm around her, tapped the pistol against her neck. “What now?” she asked, when it was clear he wasn’t moving. 

“I’ve been thinking about that myself.”

“And?”

Steve pulled her into a heated kiss, biting hard at her tongue, her lips, and she let him, thinking this was a good way for him to get the anger out, a good way to keep him distracted - and definitely did not let herself get pulled in to the slide of his mouth against her, the puff of breath into the kiss that she knew preceded the sort of shag that would leave her bruised for days - until she was roughly pushed to her feet. “Open the trapdoor.”

“What trapdoor?” she asked, still trying to claim stupidity.

“Peggy,” Steve said, eyes narrowing. He shot just past her head and she blinked quickly as she tamped down her reaction, palms turning into fists at her sides. “Don’t bullshit me.”

She knelt, opened it and let it drop forward. “I’m not going down there,” she said, hoping if she pissed him off enough, she might get him to waste his bullets. He was already down two. 

He didn't take the bait. “Either you do, or I’m going to make what I did to Hodge look merciful to you.”

Peggy gave him a sharp look before obeying. She might be able to get away from him if she was fast enough, but the odds of getting around in dark, underground tunnels that Steve would know like the back of his hand without having any idea of an escape route were low. 

She descended, mindful of how Steve adjusted the carpet over the opening, and then push the hatched closed above him. The light dimmed and disappearing until the only source of light was a faint glow from below her feet. 

When she hit the ground she shivered at the breeze of artificial air pumping through the tunnels. There were long thin lights lining the top of the walls leading out from the antechamber she stood in, into the larger room beyond, and down a curved hall that made it impossible to see past. The same boxes she’d counted in shipping containers were stacked three and four high in piles in the next room. 

On the wall by the ladder hung a map of Brooklyn, hand-drawn lines atop it in a thick black marker. She tried to memorize what she assumed was the route of the tunnels, but Steve dropped down behind her and pushed her through the rooms with the muzzle at her back once more.

The route of hallways he marched her through twisted her mental map into knots - something that was either intentional on Steve's part, or built intentionally into the tunnels to confuse all visitors - and she soon had no idea where beneath Brooklyn they were despite committing their route to memory. They didn't pass any more ladders. The only exit she knew of was through the store.

Steve stopped Peggy outside a metal door. She knew the fate that awaited her inside any room: a quick death, or a slow one.

Every survival instinct she had flared in the shadows the fluorescent lights cast and told her to get out while she could. 

As he reached for the door she seized her chance and spun, kicking up at his chest with her heel and shoving the gun aside with her arm, startling him enough to knock it out of his hand. 

Steve recovered quickly, cutting her off as she swooped for the gun by grabbing her around the waist. He slammed her against the wall face first, a mockery of their morning together in the shower. 

He must have known who she was by then, his sullen mood and slow teases in bed acting as a goodbye. 

The breath left her chest as her skull hit the concrete with an audible thump that had her ears ringing, forced to the present.

“You’re making this,” Steve said, and grunted as she tried to kick back at him, “harder than it needs to be.”

“Let me go,” she snarled, and he gripped her wrists, pinned them above her head. He was pressed up against her, paralyzing her with his weight and muscle, and she could imagine the dark pleasure brightening his eyes as he held her there. She wiggled back against him. 

Steve licked his lips audibly in her ear. “I’m not that fucking stupid, Peggy.”

There were footsteps coming quickly down the hall. The echoes masked how far away they were. She was running out of time. Peggy squirmed, trying to find any leverage. “Are you sure?” she taunted, aiming again for him to waste another bullet, or lower the hand holding the gun and release her wrist in the process so she might make a jab with her elbow.

She didn’t get a chance to try. Bucky appeared in her peripheral vision, eyes blazing and gun drawn. “Didn’t find anything in her apartment other than an empty spot under the floorboards.”

“I didn’t think you would,” Steve said, stepping back. Peggy sagged against the wall in Bucky’s line of fire. She imagined he wouldn’t be as generous about warning shots as Steve was. She put her back against it, keeping them both in her sight as Steve bent to pick up his pistol.

Steve pushed open the door to a small concrete room, empty except for a metal chair in the center, bolted to the ground, chains wrapped around the back and the legs.

Bucky raised his eyebrows when she didn’t move. Steve gripped her arm, dragged her roughly through the doorway, shoved her to the chair, and knelt to shackle her legs.

Peggy prepared to kick Steve away. Bucky whistled, drawing her attention to his gun in warning.

“Wait outside,” Steve barked at his friend, once she was properly tied. She didn’t move in case the bindings were loose; there was no point giving away if he’d left room enough for her to wiggle free. Not that the previous times he’d tied her up would indicate that he’d be so careless, but one could hope.

“Why bring me down here?” she asked. “Why not just kill me?”

She knew the answer, of course. To torture her for information. And he would do it in every terrible way he knew, because this had been a personal betrayal.

Peggy spared a fond thought for the cyanide-pill-in-the-tooth method that spies in movies always had of getting out of these things.

Steve let out an angry breath and put his gun in the waistband of his jeans. He stood. He put his hands on his waist. He dropped them.

She started to ask something else and he slapped her across the face, her head twisted by the sheer force of it.

Her mouth hung open, the pain reverberating through her head until it gathered into a throbbing mass on her cheek.

“What did you tell them?” Steve demanded.

“Not much,” Peggy said quickly, and Steve’s jaw worked as if he was chewing over his next words. 

“ _How_ _much_?”

She rubbed her tongue over the inside of her cheek, focused on the pain, pressed her lips together. 

He gripped her face, fingers digging into her cheeks, and made her look at him. “This is your last chance, Agent Peggy Carter,” he said, spitting her name at her. “Were you giving them information as you received it? Was there a hand off?”

Peggy expected to see the anger in his eyes. The hurt was a surprise. 

“Do they know about the shipments? The Russians?”

She didn't answer. He shoved her face to the side and turned his back on her, hand on his forehead, pressing in at his temples.

She focused on the hinge of the door, memorizing anything about it that might be handy later. It opened inward. The metal was a few inches thick. There was enough space beneath it for air to come in.

Steve reached for his gun, back muscles rippling under his sweater. He was tense, he didn’t want to do this. 

She could work with that.

“A hand off,” Peggy said to appease him. That information wouldn’t make a difference. 

“Okay.” Steve faced her with a gaze that traveled down her outfit. She knew how debauched she must look in lingerie, legs spread and bound to the chair. Peggy imagined him coming over to touch her, to tear what little she wore off, make her remember she was his. 

She didn’t know if she’d be bothered by it, considering the alternatives.

Instead, he crouched in front of her, smoothed his hand down her cheek, as gentle as he’d ever been. “Okay. That’s good. We’re getting somewhere. What else can you tell me?”

“I’m telling you there wasn’t much I gave them that you wouldn’t want them to know.”

“What was in there?”

If she told him everything, she’d be of no more use to him. If she didn’t, she’d lose whatever good graces she was in now. 

If she told him something, she might be able to convince him that she was becoming only loyal to him, might be able to continue working for him, continue the job. His long and able fingers acted as a reminder to what else she could continue doing with him as he rested his hand on her neck. He dragged his thumb up the column of her throat, a barely there scrape of his nail.

“They don’t know about the tunnels. I only realized tonight.”

“That’s what you were doing in my office, hm? Working out that hunch.” He cupped her cheek, patted over the spot he’d hit her earlier as he stood. “Smart girl. I’ll send someone for you soon.”

There was no give to the chains, no matter how much Peggy pulled at them after he left, and with no windows, light fluctuation, or even a discernible change in the temperature, Peggy struggled to keep track of the time that passed. Her best measurement was by her hunger, which was slow to creep up on her. 

Years had passed since she’d been held like this, since she was in the field with unreliable access to food, but the waves of wanting were still familiar. The hunger would dissipate, she knew, turn to an ache she could ignore, into a nausea, into a lightheadedness to focus through. The thirst would consume her after two days and likely kill her after a third.

Peggy counted the footsteps in the hallway, counted the times the guards outside her room swapped positions. They never spoke loudly enough to hear. She counted seconds, stretched her neck to prepare for the eventual sleep she’d need to let her head hang forward for. She wiggled her fingers and toes to ensure she wasn’t losing circulation. 

Her guess would have been that it was nearing twelve hours later when Bucky showed up—he was in the same clothes, though that didn't mean much when the Agency would have started to poke at every corner of the organization that they knew about. They could have been up all night handling it. He had a bag slung over his shoulder, and was flanked by Falsworth who had a bucket in one hand and a gun in the other.

She didn’t move, didn’t show signs of fear. It would only make him draw out the torment, and Barnes was looking particularly murderous. He had been the one to conduct her background check, after all, and with his fierce loyalty… 

Peggy pictured all of the tools hanging on the walls of Shield & Key, the store full of hardware that he'd have at his disposal. 

She sat up straighter, put on a blank expression, gripped the slats of the chair back that her knuckles had been rest against.

He walked around her to undo the chains at the back of the chair that were keeping her torso pinned.

“Don’t think about it, Carter,” Falsworth said. He’d been suspicious of her all along. He also wouldn’t hesitate to shoot. 

Neither of them seemed to care that she was barely dressed.

“Am I being moved to a new location?” she asked.

Bucky’s answering glare told her nothing. When he'd unlocked the last of the chains, he opened the bag and dumped its contents onto the floor. She'd been bracing herself for all sorts of torture implements to fall out, but instead a large water bottle thunked to the floor, followed by a protein bar. They were both soon covered by clothes from her apartment: a clean shirt, sweater, pair of flannel bottoms, thick socks. Bucky had to give the duffel a shake for a tightly rolled blanket to fall on top of the pile. It smelled of Steve's linen closet.

Falsworth tossed the bucket into the corner of the room. The sound of the metal on the concrete reverberated in the small space as the two left in silence, a loud lock clicking into place once the door was shut.

Peggy drank less than a quarter of the bottle after inspecting it hadn’t been tampered with. She didn’t know how long this was meant to last her. The bar was peanut-butter flavored and the tiny bite she’d taken was heavenly. She planned to savor the taste of it in her mouth.

After making use of the bucket, she dressed herself, took a few long minutes to stretch each muscle so stiffness wouldn't put her at a disadvantage if she needed to fight, and folded herself into the blanket so it was half on top of her and half acting as a cushion beneath her with her back to the wall.

As she lay with her eyes closed, Peggy reminded herself of the route they'd taken to get to the cell she was in, of the things she knew about the tunnels and about Steve and the organization, of the fact that the clothes and food meant Steve was intending to keep her alive. 

_For now,_ her traitorous brain added, right before a fitful sleep pulled her under.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw for some violence (and some vaguely iffy consent if you squint hard enough)

Peggy would guess it had been a week that she'd been in the cell. They’d given her a total of seven protein bars, seven water bottles, and bruised ribs for the second attempt she'd made at escaping. 

It was really her own fault, though; she had let herself get complacent and assumed there was a set guard rotation, which left her with Falsworth on the day she’d been planning to barrel through whoever brought that day’s rations, instead of the expected Jones.

Falsworth was still the least fond of her, it seemed.

She was reclining on the blanket, laid out on the floor later that day when Steve came in, clean shaven and pressed in a way that implied he’d had a full night’s sleep and was in the peak of health. Peggy’s hair was greasy enough to stay relatively well in the tight plait she’d put it in, it hurt to sit up for too long, and she was sure she reeked as much as the cell did.

Peggy forced herself to stand when she saw him, to make herself more of an equal and give herself a bit more leverage should something happen. 

Before the injury, she’d been stretching and exercising to pass the time, and she’d fought through much worse in her days as a field agent, though she still wasn’t looking forward to the possibility of a fight.

“You know,” Steve started, his mouth pulling up in a smirk that didn’t reach his eyes, “you look like a lot less trouble than you are when you’re in pajamas.”

“I’m not planning on causing any trouble,” Peggy lied, keeping her hands flat and still at her side.

His nostrils flared at his barely-there laugh. “Any more, you mean. Sit.” 

“I don’t think I will.”

“I’m not going to ask twice.”

She didn’t break eye contact. Irritating him into wasting bullets hadn’t worked the last time she tried, but irritating him enough into a head shot might be to her advantage.

He came closer, the shifting angle of light darkening the bags under his eyes into pronounced shadows. Her first instinct was to reach out to him; she knew him like this, this Steve that wouldn’t sleep or turn off his phone, who required a steady hand in his hair and murmured reassurances to soothe him. 

It only reminded her of all the versions of him she’d seen, of the first Steve she met with blood on his collar, the one half naked in bed with blood soaked clothes littering the floor, the one who personally paid for the groceries of the single mother in his building, the one who held her legs apart and stared up at her with a cocky grin.

His jaw twitched, the first sign of his annoyance, the first warning. As he grabbed her arm and sat her forcibly in the chair, she found herself wishing he had stubble to even the ground with how unkempt she felt, but that was part of the game. His shirt was crisply ironed to show that he held all the power. He was more closed off to her than he’d ever been, and he knew more about her than she’d ever intended. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling. 

It made her better understand why he’d still be upset with her.

“What was in the file?” Steve asked, hovering over her.

Peggy didn’t have to check behind him to know that he was flanked at the door. She didn’t know if he’d be harsher with her punishment or not if she attempted to get out with an audience. She looked up at him calmly, her mouth still.

“Peggy,” he leaned over, one hand on the back of the chair, the other on her knee, "let me remind you: you're in a room underground with one way out and more guards than you can take.”

If her ribs weren’t injured she might be able to make it out without having to kill anyone, but at a disadvantage like this she’d have to rely on getting a gun and being smart about the places she shot. If it came to her life it would be easy, but she’d already made the mistake of viewing Steve’s associates as individuals more than targets for a while now, as Jacques whose long distance partner was finally back in town, as Jim who always had a dirty joke and a cigarette, as Dum Dum, Gabe, even Falsworth, who had softened with her when he had new pictures of his nieces to show.

Steve continued, unbothered by her lack of response. “No one knows you’re here except me and my guys, and they’re not loyal to anyone else. Think about why you might want to get on my good side.”

It didn’t seem like he was planning on torturing her, since he hadn’t yet chained her down. It either meant a quick death, or a chance at something else. “What do you want from me, Steve? You can’t expect I’ll hand over everything I know because you ask me nicely. And you're clearly not going to injure me to get it.”

His eyes narrowed, face shuttering into something more distant and harsh. “I might not have the stomach to hurt you, but I can think of a few people who do.”

“Falsworth didn’t even have the decency of breaking any bones.”

Steve’s jaw worked. He must not have cleared his men for any gratuitous punishment. Another good sign. “You take a look around you. Weigh your best option.”

She didn’t expect him to leave so suddenly, and she didn’t expect that the next day she’d be getting only water.

“No protein bar this time?” she asked, looking up at Jones, who had the decency to look chagrined as he crouched in front of her.

“I’m supposed to tell you the budget’s too tight.”

“I see.”

“Betty,” Gabe started, eyeing her roots, the brown hair no doubt growing back in. “Peggy, he’s not going to be this patient forever. If there’s anything you can tell him...” 

The light swung overhead with the distant sound of the R train. Peggy’s lips were chapped from the cold. She opened the bottle, the top turning too easily, the seal already broken. It could have been part of his power game, an attempt to get in her head, or it was a message, a countdown of how long she could go without water: this was her last chance. 

Her mouth already felt dry as she twisted the cap back on and set it down next to her. She’d dump it down the small drain in the corner to keep herself from temptation once he was gone in case it was laced with anything. “Why do you work for him?”

Gabe blew out a breath with puffed up cheeks. “You’ve seen what he does for these people. No good person in Sunset Park is afraid of him. Crime in the area’s been the lowest it has in ages.”

“You wouldn’t call what he does ‘crime?’” Peggy asked, feeling for all the world like she was only playing devil’s advocate.

“I’d say he’s cleaning up the street.”

“So he thinks himself a vigilante, and you’re here to sell me the propaganda.”

Gabe stood and held his hands up. “He knows what he is. He never claimed to be any different.”

Peggy stretched out her legs and leaned her head back against the wall, closed her eyes, hoping he’d leave so she could get back to doing the minimal exercise she could do painlessly. She’d have to scale back now to save energy, with the lack of food and water.

He thankfully took her silent suggestion to leave.

The first problem she had to deal with was that Gabe wasn’t wrong. Steve was aware he was violent, knew he was a mobster and not a hero, knew that he had to play dirty to get the things that his community needed.

The second problem was that Steve was right about her options. She’d already started to show she was willing to give him information by telling him there was a hand off at all, and if she could continue to align herself with him, she could get out of this alive. Maybe even back to a place where she was back in the inner circle. And she definitely didn’t want that because of what the benefits might be—despite how tempting it was to picture the two of them eating, flirting, falling into bed together again.

No. His trust meant she could play triple agent. Make him think she’d converted to his side. Make the agency think that too, for now. She wanted this so she could play her own game.

The next time Steve showed, he brought water with him and drank from it wordlessly while she watched. “Thought about our talk?”

Peggy’s mouth was sandpaper. She wasn't sure how long it had been, but she was still alive. She didn’t respond to avoid giving him the pleasure of hearing her dry voice.

He sat down, backwards in the chair to face her spot in the corner. “Here’s the thing. A buddy of mine found out that MI6 told the Agency to stop looking for you. Sounds like you’re replaceable to them after all these months away and out of the loop. You were counter-terrorism, right? You must have missed a lot.” Steve peeled at the paper label on the bottle. “The Agency’s still looking, but you’re not leaving my watch anytime soon, and I can’t imagine they’ll keep up a search for much longer. You know why that’s important?”

He held out the bottle and she knew he’d just yank it back if she reached for it. She didn’t answer.

“When they stop looking, it gets easier for me to kill you. Less concern about dumping a body somewhere.” 

Peggy stared at the bottle of water, tongue thick in her mouth. “The Community Board.” She didn’t bother making herself sound hesitant; this wasn’t going to work unless she was as genuine as she could be, and she genuinely had thought about his offer and what information to give him. “I mentioned you took me once.”

“What about it? The meeting we went to?”

“Some names.”

He tossed the bottle to her. “That’s a start.” 

She drank a few long gulps and forced herself to stop, knowing she’d just make herself sick if she had too much at once. 

When Peggy had closed the bottle, he pulled a wrapped sandwich from his pocket and held it up. “What else do you remember?”

Peggy recognized the grey logo printed on the white paper, the shape of a bagel with generous toppings from the Brooklyn deli. Her stomach clenched in some combination of revulsion at the thought of solid food, and desperation for it. “It’s been so long,” she said lightly, voice still raspy. “Perhaps if you’d have come back to visit me sooner I would know.”

“Yeah, too bad I’ve been busy cleaning up the mess you’ve made.” She wasn’t sure if she imagined the quirk of his lips or not. He tucked the sandwich back into his sweatshirt’s pocket. “Relevant names from the community board?” he rubbed his chin while he thought. “Community leaders I might pressure? Someone specific I have under my thumb?”

God, she was hungry. She did want to earn his trust, after all, didn’t she? “Someone who might have a reason to talk.”

Steve’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to understand right away that she'd meant the treasurer whose husband had taken the fall for Steve’s club. “Of course. And who else was on that list?”

“Your dock workers. Those that are there for money alone. Nadir would be loyal to his last breath, but Leeds is a wildcard. I don’t know the others as well.”

Steve pulled the sandwich out again, tossed it onto the floor in front of her. She had enough pride to not reach for it while he watched. She didn’t have enough pride to not glance at it longingly. “Good talk,” he said, and stood. “Don’t try and run away again, and there will be more where that came from.”

He returned four days - four sandwiches - later, and stood just beside the open doorway as if daring her to run, his stare intense and unmoving from where it was trained on her.

Peggy had been in the middle of a wall sit, sweater and socks off and on the chair, flannel bottoms rolled up to her thighs, knees at a right angle. She raised an eyebrow at him while she waited for him to finally break the silence. 

“The ICE checkpoint on the bridge. That’s what I don’t get. Why would you support that?”

“I didn’t know they were picking that cover.” She grimaced, folding her arms tightly as if she might compress the lingering anger she had about it still. “All I told them was to check the trucks.”

“Would you have still told them, if you knew they'd go with that?”

“If I knew how it was going to turn out? I would.”

“And what if you knew they’d be arresting an old lady looking for a better life, and wasn't aware I'd be able to fix it?”

Peggy hadn’t met the woman. There had been too much going on at the time, though undoubtedly Steve would have had her over for dinner and invited Betty along after the debacle was settled and she was safe with her family. Steve would have made the corned beef and cabbage dish he’d claimed a few times was the only thing he knew how to cook, the woman and her family would have come with a meal of their own. It would have been a happy night weighed down by her guilt. 

Her temporary job with the Agency was to make the city safer for its people, wasn’t it? Even her job at MI6 was about stopping terrorism before it could happen, though she’d clashed with her bosses about what level of collateral damage was acceptable. That’s what had led to this whole bloody mess in the first place. 

Peggy stood up and rubbed at the burn in her thighs. “I don’t know."

Steve assessed her, then motioned for her to come closer. “Come here. We’re leaving.”

“Finally taking me to be killed, are you?” 

He snorted. “After the useful information you gave me last time? Not at all.”

“I barely gave you anything.”

“Well, you got me thinking, what would _master spy_ ,” he sneered at the words, “Peggy advise me to do about a potential weak link? There’s no way that I could match whatever payment the FBI would offer her in exchange for the story about what happened with her husband, and she’d likely wind up giving me up whether or not she accepted a bribe. So, I stopped a leak and got a body. Two birds, one stone.”

Peggy’s lips thinned, her fingers curling in on themselves as she walked toward him. She thought of the cold woman, the way she’d looked at Steve with such malice. She tried to feel guilt over being the indirect cause over this woman’s death, but was too busy focusing on his body language, on whether or not he seemed to be enjoying himself. The only amusement she saw there was at Peggy’s reaction, which, while somewhat reassuring about his character, only irked her more. “Why did you need a body?”

Steve tugged her hands behind her back and frog-marched her to the wall of the cell until she was pressed flat against it, the length of his body behind her. She could feel him reach into his pocket, before the sharp grip and plastic hiss of the zip tie securing her wrists in place. “I needed a body that was about your size,” he started, voice in her ear, “so they’d give up on looking for you. She was a natural brunette like you, but we managed to get our hands on a bottle of cheap hair dye.”

“That won’t convince them. There’s—”

“Well, we also got rid of all of those inconvenient hands, feet, and teeth that she had, and put her in an outfit of yours. I’d guess that they won’t bother with trying to get a DNA sample from elsewhere on the body, but even if they do, accidents happen in those labs, don’t they? Things disappear. People have vulnerabilities.” His voice grew darker. “Don’t think I’m going to leave any _i_ un-dotted or _t_ un-crossed. Not when it comes to you, Peggy.”

Peggy pushed back against him. “Is that a promise or a threat?”

“Let’s compromise and say it’s both.”

The grey walls dragged on endlessly as they wound their way through the tunnels. They passed mostly storage space, a few doors with padlocks on them, and a few men that she didn't recognize, clearly from a different branch of the network. 

“Where are all of you friends?” Peggy asked after they'd been moving for a while.

“Everyone’s busy.” He fell silent. They walked on.

When it had already seemed like they'd walked a few miles she started to count her steps, and was almost at two thousand - the last three hundred of which the floor had been sloping upwards for - when he stopped her at a steep set of stairs. They went right up into the ceiling, another trap door.

“Go on,” he ordered.

“Can I please have my hands back?”

“Nope.” 

“What if I trip?”

“Then you'll crack your head open, and I'll have to find a mop.”

Peggy huffed, but started climbing.

The latch to the door above the stairs was open, and she pushed up with the back of her neck and shoulders until it opened fully, revealing a modest sized den, with plush couches, a deep maroon and brown afghan over the back of one, and a coffee table that looked to be an antique. It wasn’t anywhere she’d been yet, or seen in all of her time working for him. How many other properties that were attached to the network were scattered around Brooklyn?

Steve followed her into the room, got the door pushed back into place where it blended in seamlessly with the carpet. 

“Where are we?”

“New York,” Steve said, a hint of his accent coming out in his sarcasm as he grabbed her wrists again. She squirmed a little as if considering to fight him on it. “And don’t make a mess of this place. We’re borrowing it.”

The den was filled with bookshelves, and she could make out titles in various languages. Gabe's place, maybe. Upstairs from the basement they were let out into a small mudroom with shoes of various sizes and styles for both men and women, a door with a curtained window in it facing what she assumed to be a backyard, considering a lack of traffic noises. “Whose place is it?” 

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who’s got no leverage, Peg.”

The impersonality of the art on the walls in the hallway made her feel as if she was in a horror movie, in the cardboard set of a house, about to be murdered. But she knew Steve had a warehouse. She was banking on the hope that he'd prefer to do all of his torturing in the same place.

The first door on the right in the hallway was the bathroom. It looked as old as the coffee table in the basement, containing a pink porcelain toilet, sink, and bathtub shower unit, with a metal support bar drilled into the wall.

She couldn’t tell if the bottom of the ceramic bathtub was stained wine dark with age or blood. 

“Don’t,” Steve said, pushing her into the shower, reading her as her thoughts started to go toward self defense.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, twisting to keep him from getting to her hands. "If you're about to murder me, it's only fair I get a warning.”

“It is?” He yanked her back and secured her hands, pulled a knife out of his back pocket as he stepped around to face her. He hadn’t kept one on him before he’d found out who she really was. 

“I think it’d be in your best interest to warn me, anyway. I might have more valuable information.”

“Or you might be bluffing to save your skin.” He brought the knife up toward her neck, lifted her chin with the flat of it. Adrenaline spread through her, warming her feet that had gone cold from the long walk. She flexed her fingers behind her. She and Steve were eye level with the extra height she had from the tub. “Do you have more to tell me that might make me want to kill you any less?” he continued.

There was a careful look in his eye, none of the wild she’d seen the night she told him about Hodge. None of the hurt and anger she’d seen when he’d found her in his office. This was something new. 

He still had secrets for her to figure out. The thought was almost thrilling. Or maybe that was the adrenaline.

“They don’t know about the Lehnsherrs' deli. I didn’t give Clint’s name or address, or anything about the construction he's doing. I didn’t think that was important.”

“But they know there’s a landlord I’m working with.”

She gave a nod by lifting her chin higher to avoid the blade. “But they won’t suspect him. He doesn’t fit the profile they have of you.”

Steve dragged the tip of the knife down. Her blood quickened under her skin as if daring him to spill it, and he took the bait, using just enough pressure in the hollow of her throat that she felt a drop of head beading over the shallow cut. She kept herself from swallowing, from stepping back, from looking at his lips.

“You look awful like this."

“Being held in a cell for over a week would do that to you, too, Steve.” 

Steve hummed a response, held her shirt taut, and slid the knife down to cut through it. With that clean slice through the front and a few easy rips to the shoulders, he was able to toss the remains of it to the floor. His eyes raked over the wire and lace bra that she’d only put back on for some sort of support while exercising, but he didn’t allow himself to enjoy it for long; he kept the knife just over her stomach as he leaned around her and unhooked the bra with one hand.

With two quick slashes, the delicate straps were cut and the scrap of lingerie joined the shirt. 

“Falsworth was starting to complain about the smell," he teased as he knelt, tugging down her bottoms and panties.

Peggy knew she could kick him in the face hard enough to knock him back at this angle, maybe have him hit his head on the sink or the floor, attempt to pick up the knife with her toes, lift it up behind her to grab with one of her hands. She could cut her way out of the two zip ties, grab a towel, and make her escape.

If she was smart, that's what she would have done.

Instead, she stepped out of the clothes, letting him move them to the pile with the rest. Old sweat and grime clung to her body, but Steve didn’t seem to mind touching her, his fingers curled around her hip as he reached to turn on the tap. 

She really should have been more embarrassed about being so vulnerable in front of him, too, but his hand was warm and soft as it moved up to the drop of blood, rubbing it into her skin as the water came on.

Peggy got her head under the spray, desperate to wash her face, but Steve's hands guided her head back to wet her hair, tilted her up so he could add shampoo. "You're getting wet," she pointed out. He looked down as water flecked his shirt and frowned.

"I have a meeting later," he explained as he stepped back to dry his hands and unbutton the shirt, needing to keep it dry so he stayed presentable. His face was soft and unreadable. 

The water ran down her side. “Does that mean you don't have time to join me?” she asked.

“Is that an attempt at seducing me?” he asked. He shook out his shirt, folded it neatly, placed it on the sink, then did the same with his jeans, left in an undershirt and shorts. 

“I thought I already did that.”

“Betty seduced me. Peggy’s got a lot of work to do still.”

“Perhaps I was asking because I missed you.” 

He took a washcloth from where it was waiting on the towel rack, rubbed soap into a lather, and stepped as close as he could to the tub without climbing in to start rubbing at the layer of grime on her. The body wash had a fruity smell and an exfoliating agent that implied a woman lived there - Angie? - though her thoughts had barely strayed from Steve when she was pulled back by his effort to brush against her nipple with every stroke of the washcloth. Steve’s hands were a familiar weight on her skin, the intimacy of it surely meant to remind her how well he knew her body even after weeks of separation, how well she responded to him, even like this, bare and trapped and _wanting_ no less than she ever had before she'd betrayed him.

Peggy held her breath as he moved lower, but suddenly he was the perfect gentleman as he cleaned below her waist.

She tried to convince herself that was a good thing. She tried to convince herself to not stare at the way Steve’s shorts stuck to his skin from the spray of water.

He was even gentle with the bottom of her feet, dark from dirt and raw from small pebbles in the tunnels. “Perhaps I did, too,” Steve said softly as he removed the shower head to rinse her off.

She was almost too deep in her thoughts to remember what he’d been responding to.

When Steve shut the water off, she let out a genuine sigh. 

He laughed. “Feel better?”

“You’ve no idea.”

After Steve managed to get her out of the shower, and partially off without one of them slipping and falling, he rested the towel over her shoulder and gave up. “You’re gonna behave,” he ordered, gripping her wrists tightly and guiding her into the hall. Her skin broke out in goosebumps as soon as the cold air hit her.

The bedroom he led her into was just next door and was largely spartan, holding only a dark cherry wood dresser against one wall and a bed with a deep green quilt on it below a curtained window. A pile of clothes Peggy could recognize as Steve’s was on the edge of the bed. Despite the chill, her cheeks warmed; he’d planned this, planned to take her here, have his hands all over her, dress her in his clothes. 

She didn't have long to ruminate on how possessive he was acting. Steve sliced through the zip tie and gave her a sharp shove toward the bed.

Peggy regained her balance, glared at him, and toweled off as he lifted the gun. She hadn't even noticed him grabbing it from the bathroom floor. “Do you really think I’m going to try and run right now?”

He shrugged, the gun barely moving from pointing at the dead center of her chest. His eyes barely moved away, either. “I don’t really know you, do I?”

“Am I interrupting something?” a flat voice said from the doorway, cutting off her answer. Natasha leaned against the doorjamb, comfortable as if she’d been there as long as the doorway had. 

“Peggy, you remember Nat?” Steve said, holstering his gun. 

Of course. This was Natasha’s home. He must have taken her further east, deeper into the Russian territory.

She pulled on the clothes without turning her back to them.

“ _Do you know if she understands Russian_?” Natasha asked, Peggy quickly translating in her head. Her Russian was rusty, but she knew enough to know that Natasha was clearly articulating the words, either for her benefit or for Steve's. 

“ _I don't know,_ " Steve replied, finishing his thought in English. "Gabe thinks she probably knows at least a few languages.” He nodded at the window over the bed as the sound of a slow driving car passed by. “Front secured?”

“The front window, this room, the whole block. I told you I'd get it covered." She gave him a light shrug. "Just about time for our talk, Rogers. Put your clothes back on and come to the kitchen.” Natasha’s gaze was an odd combination of sharp and bored when it settled on Peggy, like a cat assessing its prey and determining it wasn’t worth any time. Peggy affected the same look back at her.

Natasha smirked and saw herself out. Steve ran his tongue over his teeth when they were alone. “Do I have to tie your hands up again?”

“You heard her,” Peggy said with an easy smile. She sat on the edge of the bed. “The whole block’s secure.”

“Keep in mind, Carter,” he said, putting his hand on the doorknob, speaking slowly like Natasha had to better impart what he was trying to say, “I might be soft on you, but not all of my associates are as forgiving. Don't do anything stupid.”

Steve shut the door behind himself, and she was alone once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poor Peggy was waiting long enough that I figured I'd get her above ground this chapter. hope it was worth the wait once again! 
> 
> sorry for any typos, it's late and this is unbeta'd and I just wanted to get it posted since I finally finished it :)


End file.
